Beijing (AP) – The German team has to wait a long time for their performance at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Speed skater Claudia Pechstein and bobsledder Francesco Friedrich as flag bearers lead the German team on Friday evening (8:00 p.m. local time/1:00 p.m. CET) as only 85th of 91 nations to the national stadium. This emerges from the list published by the organizers. The order is based on the number of dashes in the first character of the country name in Chinese. Germany “De” has relatively many with 15 dashes.
Traditionally, Greece is the first team to host the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. As the current host, China marks the end of the Nations Parade. While, like the German team, numerous teams have each named a man and a woman as flag bearers, the flags of Nigeria, Liechtenstein and the Virgin Islands are said to be carried by Olympic volunteers.