Parade of the Athletes

Parade of the Athletes is a retrospective mix by Dutch DJ Tiësto of his live set performed during the opening ceremony of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece on 13 August 2004 (see 2004 in music). This was the first time that a DJ was asked to perform for a ceremony at the Olympics. Recognizing one of their own, the Dutch team came up to the booth while Tiësto was performing this set. All of the songs on this track are original songs composed by Tiësto except for "Adagio for Strings", which is his own remix of Samuel Barber's piece by the same name (the remix was also influenced by William Orbit's original electronic remix of the piece in 1999), and "Athena", which is also a remix of Adagio in G minor, a piece often attributed to Tomaso Albinoni, but actually composed by Remo Giazotto.

The album contains 8 new tracks composed exclusively for the Olympic Games Athens 2004 Opening Ceremony, and 4 other well-known tracks ("Traffic", "Lethal Industry", "Adagio for Strings" and "Forever Today"). An unmixed version was also released.