Cycling was well-represented among the flagbearers at Friday evening’s Opening Ceremonies for the Paris Olympics. Sixteen athletes from across the various cycling disciplines were chosen to carry their nations’ flags in the boat parade down the Seine on Friday alongside other international stars like Lebron James and Coco Gauff of the United States (countries can have two flagbearers, although not all do) and Giannis Antetokounmpo of Greece.
Tour de France points champion Biniam Girmay (Eritrea) and 2016 Olympic MTB gold medalist Nino Schurter (Switzerland) headlined a group largely drawn from countries outside of traditional heartland countries like France, Italy, and Belgium.
The total number of 16 may seem small compared to athletics (a.k.a. track and field) and its 101 flagbearers or swimming and its 72, but it represents a huge increase in cycling’s representation at the Opening Ceremonies compared to the “2020” Olympics that were held in Tokyo in 2021, where only three cyclists were chosen to carry the flag out of the 200+ nations who send athletes to the Games. Six flagbearers in Rio in 2016 were cyclists.
Of the 16 flagbearing cyclists in Paris, 10 are road racers, including Girmay, who is one of three WorldTour riders; the other two WT-level competitors are women – Thị Thật Nguyễn of Vietnam, who races for Roland, and Safia al Sayegh of the United Arab Emirates, who races for UAE Team ADQ. Four are mountain bikers, including Schurter and Aurelie Halbwachs (Mauritius), who will compete in both road and MTB events.
The other three flagbearing cyclists are track riders, one of whom is Aaron Gate of New Zealand, who also races with second-division Burgos-BH on the road, though he will only be racing track in Paris.
In a sign that recent efforts to globalize the sport – spearheaded in no small part by the UCI – have had some impact, the countries represented are many, and almost all of them are outside of Europe. In addition to the aforementioned Eritrea, Mauritius, UAE, Vietnam, and New Zealand, cyclists from Afghanistan, Colombia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Namibia, Uganda, Panama and Rwanda were chosen to carry flags. Switzerland and its neighbor Liechtenstein are the two European countries with flagbearers drawn from the cycling world.
Even with so many flagbearers compared to the last few Olympic Games, plenty of big names from the cycling world did not take part in the Opening Ceremonies for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the time trial event takes place on Saturday. Pre-race bookies’ favorite Josh Tarling (Great Britain) was among the TT stars to skip the boat ride in preparation for the big goal the following day.
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