Ace fencer Lei to carry China flag as flame arrives
Print Edition
OLYMPIC fencing champion Lei Sheng will carry China’s flag at the Rio de Janeiro Games opening ceremony and he will be the first non-basketball player to get the honor since 1984, China’s state media said.
Lei, 32, who became China’s first men’s foil Olympic champion at London 2012, also carried China’s flag at the 2014 Asian Games in Busan, South Korea.
Basketball players have traditionally been the standard bearers at the Olympics. Yao Ming twice carried the flag.
Swimming superstar Michael Phelps, 31, the most decorated Olympian of all time with 18 gold medals among his career haul of 22, will carry the United States flag while 14-time tennis grand slam champion Rafael Nadal, 30, is Spain’s flag bearer.
The Olympic flame, meanwhile, hitched a ride on a tour boat to finally reach Rio.
The relay from Greece to Brazil reached its final city yesterday with plenty of fanfare Sailors, journalists and even viewers live on Periscope watched the flame arrive in the Olympic host city from Niteroi, just across a short channel leading into Guanabara Bay.
The flame will make its way to Maracana Stadium for the opening ceremony tomorrow. The relay began with a ceremonial lighting in Ancient Olympia, Greece, on April 21.
Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes carried the torch yesterday after an evening of protests forced a change in the path of the torch relay in the neighboring cities of Sao Goncalo and Niteroi.
Paes received the flame from former sailor and Olympic medalist Lars Grael.
On Tuesday a protest involving 50 people stopped the relay in Sao Goncalo, one of the poorest cities of greater Rio.
The Olympic movement has been struggling to douse mounting wrangling over the Russia doping scandal even as football officially launched the Rio Games yesterday.
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach on Wednesday called for deep reforms of the World Anti-Doping Agency, while the Court of Arbitration for Sport rebuffed appeals by 17 Russian rowers against their ban from Rio.
With appeals involving a dozen other Russian swimmers, wrestlers and weightlifters still to be decided, the controversy over state-run doping blamed on the Russian government threatened to overshadow tomorrow’s opening ceremony.
Official competition started yesterday with Marta’s Brazil taking on China in the top tie of the first day of women’s football. Zimbabwe’s women, ranked 93rd in the world, were taking on No. 2 Germany in their first ever match at the Olympics.
Today, Neymar’s Brazil starts its campaign for a first-ever football gold against South Africa.
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