Park City, Utah ? Let the games be … delayed.

The Winter Olympics were to begin with a whisper Friday, the sound of American Brendan Doran cruising down the 90-meter ski ramp, then thrusting into the air with a “whoosh,” landing softly to mitten-muffled applause.

Jim Dudleston of farmington, utah, clears snow near the finish line of the downhill course in Snowbasin, Utah. The men's training run was canceled due to poor weather conditions Friday on the first day of the Salt Lake City Olympics.

Instead, the Games opened with the sounds of flags crackling in the wind, a public-address announcement explaining the refund policy, and the drone of a traffic jam.

Not what organizers had in mind.

The 90-meter ski-jumping qualifications were the first official event of the Games, taking place at Utah Olympic Park near Park City. But skin-numbing 50 mph gusts forced the cancellation of the event, pushing the qualifying into Sunday’s finals.

It was an inauspicious start to the Games. Despite the torture of getting hit in the face repeatedly by blowing snow, thousands of fans had made their way to the base of the ski-jump hills to await jumpers who never came.

It felt like the hours before an outdoor concert begins. Young school kids played in the snow, oblivious to the cold. Teen-agers lay on blankets, as if silently awaiting a frozen death. Adults waved flags, maybe just to stay warm. Some stood in a line stretching 50 yards, matched only by another line not far away. They wanted to buy refreshments.

The cancellation announcement, coming nearly two hours after the event was to begin, started a slow-motion fire drill. The concession lines dissolved and people snaked downhill. With everyone leaving at once, it took 30 minutes to get out of the parking lot and drive the one mile to Interstate 80, leading back to Salt Lake City.

Poor weather also caused the cancellation of practice for the men’s downhill and training sessions in several other events, forcing organizers to hurriedly implement backup plans after years of planning.

“Mother Nature didn’t cooperate with our hopes here of starting out,” said Clinton Hill, venue general manager at the Park, site of ski jumping, luge, bobsled and skeleton.

The qualifying round consisting of 60 jumpers will now be combined with a “trial” jump and held before Sunday’s scheduled medal round.

A snowstorm blew through the Salt Lake City area just hours before the opening ceremony, dumping a few inches of fresh powder.

And while the storm helped clear out the hazy inversion that had shrouded the downtown area for the past few days, the inclement weather made it impossible to do much of anything in the Wasatch Mountains.

At Snowbasin, 33 miles from Salt Lake City, practice for the men’s downhill, alpine skiing’s elite event, was canceled. Training for women’s downhill and Nordic combined never got started, either.

The men lugers in Park City got in one practice run before wind and blowing snow worsened track conditions, and the afternoon session was postponed until today after several teams complained.

Things were calm on the ski hill early Friday morning, but by the time the event was set to begin at 9 a.m., there were near white-out conditions.

“In the nine years I’ve been here, I’ve only seen one other day when the winds were this high,” said competition manager Alan Johnson. “We actually had a few windows today for safe jumping, but it wasn’t consistent. You never knew when you’d get a gust.”

Depending on its direction, the wind can either be a ski jumper’s best friend or a lift ticket to the emergency room.

Johnson said Friday’s winds were actually blowing in a favorable direction for the jumpers, and would have increased their distances, but the gusts made it unsafe to hold a competition.

Sunday’s weather forecast calls for sunny skies and calm winds ideal jumping conditions. But that was little consolation for many of the nearly 11,000 fans who spent hours braving harsh conditions and never got to see a single jump.

After organizers announced the cancellation, fans trudged back to their cars. They will get full refunds because the event was canceled, organizers said.

“I was really disappointed,” said shivering 17-year-old Marissa Harding while clutching an American flag. “But it’s the right decision. It’s for the jumpers’ safety.”

Two-time Olympian Doran would have been the first to test the elements.

“We were in our wax cabin and the roof was shaking,” Doran said. “It’s better that we didn’t find out what would have happened on the jumps.”