China’s choice of towering basketball star Yao Ming — the country’s most recognisable international sports icon — to carry the national flag for the parade of nations at the opening ceremony Friday has generated predictable buzz in the media here.
Few media outlets omitted mentioning the choice as an endorsement of the nation’s respect for international celebrity and imposing height. Yao who stands at 2.28-metres and plays NBA’s centre, carried the flag for China in the 2004 Athens games. “It really excites me to do it once again, particularly on my home court,” he told reporters after a training session at the Olympic Basketball Stadium Thursday. “This won’t be the same as in Athens. The roar of the crowd could soar to such a height that I might have to put in earplugs.”
The choice of flag-bearer by the US team, which will see eye- to- eye with China on the top count of Olympic golds, seemed to have followed different criteria and was greeted with ominous silence by the media here. The US team captains opted to elect Lopez Lomong, middle distance runner — and former Sudanese refugee — to carry the stars and stripes. Their choice was announced hours after it became known that China had revoked the visa of US Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek, a prominent critic of China’s reputed role in the humanitarian crisis in Sudan.
Lomong is a Darfur refugee who fled Sudan at six and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya for 10 years before settling down in the US. One of the “Lost Boys of Sudan”, Lomong is an outspoken member of Cheek’s Team Darfur. He said that if he wins a medal in China, he will ”hold an American flag and a Sudan flag” on the medal stand.
