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With the Paris Summer time Video games now lower than 100 days away, it is a good time to dip again into our Olympic mailbag. Thanks once more to everybody who has submitted their questions in regards to the Summer time Olympics.
There’s nonetheless time to get yours answered. Keep in mind, no query is simply too large, too small or too bizarre! Ship them to thebuzzer@cbc.ca and I will proceed to reply the very best ones because the Video games method.
Right now’s query is from Rachel, who asks: Who do you assume shall be Canada’s flag-bearer(s) for the opening ceremony?
In actual life, it is a tough resolution due to the myriad components at play. Scheduling, as an example, is a serious headache. Swimmers by no means get picked anymore as a result of a lot of them compete the morning after the ceremony. Observe and subject athletes have the alternative downside: their occasions are later within the Video games, so a lot of them may not even be in Paris but. The ladies’s soccer staff’s opening match takes place the evening earlier than in Saint-Etienne, which is lots of of kilometres away.
Then there’s the chilly actuality that many athletes merely do not wish to do it. The superstition of a Canadian flag-bearer “curse” has pale over the previous couple of many years, but it surely was downright terrifying to some within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s after high-profile athletes like decathlete Mike Smith, determine skater Kurt Browning and skier Jean-Luc Brassard missed the rostrum altogether after carrying the maple leaf.
For a lot of, it is higher to simply keep away from the stress and the hassles. And people may very well be extra daunting this time because the Paris opening ceremony options an bold athletes’ parade of greater than 80 boats on the enduring Seine river, with lots of of 1000’s of followers anticipated to attend the four-hour open-air present.
For the needs of immediately’s train, although, let’s faux that scheduling is not an element and that each athlete on the Canadian staff is prepared to simply accept the honour. Let’s additionally assume Canada will proceed to comply with the Worldwide Olympic Committee’s suggestion, first launched in 2021, to pick each a person and a lady to share the function. Personally, I might additionally just like the flag-bearers to be acquainted to numerous Canadians and have an opportunity to win no less than one medal at these Video games. Further credit score to those that already personal one.
With these standards in thoughts, listed here are two ladies and two males — every from a special sport — who would make wonderful Canadian flag-bearers for the opening ceremony on July 26 in Paris:
Maggie Mac Neil (swimming): Sure, Summer time McIntosh will probably be Canada’s greatest star of the Video games. However the teenage swimming phenom has but to win an Olympic medal. So it is likely to be finest to avoid wasting her for the closing ceremony, when she’ll in all probability be carrying a number of of them. For the opening, I will go along with Mac Neil. Canada’s solely reigning Olympic swimming champion (ladies’s 100m butterfly) additionally gained a pair of relay medals in Tokyo and is a former world champ in her signature occasion.
Jessie Fleming (soccer): For many Canadians, the ladies’s soccer staff’s gold-medal shootout victory over Sweden was essentially the most thrilling second of the 2021 Tokyo Video games. It would not have occurred with out Fleming. The fearless midfielder’s late second-half penalty kick despatched Canada to a monumental 1-0 upset of the US within the semifinals earlier than she pressured additional time within the gold-medal match with one other clutch penalty. Fleming additionally buried her shootout makes an attempt within the quarterfinals in opposition to Brazil and the ultimate in opposition to the Swedes. As well, she’s now the staff captain after the retirement of Christine Sinclair.
Andre De Grasse (monitor and subject): Talking of clutch athletes, here is De Grasse’s Olympic monitor report: six profession begins, six medals — highlighted by a 200m gold in Tokyo. And but, Canada’s most adorned monitor star has by no means carried the flag at an Olympic opening or closing ceremony. De Grasse turns 30 later this 12 months and is not any lock so as to add one other medal in Paris, so it is likely to be a good suggestion to have fun him earlier than the Video games start.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (basketball): The 25-year-old guard was simply named one in every of three finalists for the NBA MVP award after putting third within the league in scoring and main the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder to the highest spot within the Western Convention. SGA will not win the MVP (Denver’s Nikola Jokic is just about a lock for his third in 4 seasons) however he could lead on Canada to its first Olympic basketball medal in 88 years. Final summer time, Gilgeous-Alexander lifted the Canadian males’s staff to its first-ever medal on the Basketball World Cup (previously the world championships) and its first Olympic berth since 2000.
Some honourable mentions:
Canada’s solely different reigning Olympic monitor and subject champion in addition to De Grasse is decathlon star Damian Warner, however he carried the flag on the Tokyo closing ceremony. That does not essentially disqualify an athlete from doing it once more, however the tendency is to present another person an opportunity. If we’re moving into that route with a monitor and subject star, how about one in every of Canada’s 4 gold medallists from final 12 months’s world championships: decathlete Pierce LePage, 800m runner Marco Arop and hammer throwers Ethan Katzberg and Camryn Rogers.
The ladies’s eight rowing staff’s shocking gold-medal victory in Tokyo was the most effective moments of these Video games, and it appears like no less than some members of the crew shall be again for Paris. They’d be naturals for the boat-based opening ceremony, but it surely is likely to be arduous to choose simply one in every of them.
Seeking to go off the board with a very contemporary choose? How about Philip Kim — aka B-Boy Phil Wizard. The 2022 world champion is among the many favourites to win gold within the brand-new Olympic sport of breaking.
Did I miss somebody? Who’s your choose for Canadian flag-bearer? Let me know by emailing thebuzzer@cbc.ca.
