Some countries needed volunteer flag bearers at the Olympic Closing Ceremony
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Closing Ceremonies at the Olympics rarely garner the same attention that Opening Ceremonies do. The Opening Ceremony is often appointment viewing – even if on tape delay – on the Friday night that the games kick off. The Closing Ceremony, for many, is an afterthought after two-plus weeks of gluttonous sports consumption.
Another reason it’s less of a spectacle is that it’s often missing key ingredients: athletes. Many top competitors, like Michael Phelps, and some other notable American swimmers, return home after their events conclude. Not all of them, of course. Simone Biles was still in Rio to carry the American flag into the Maracana Stadium on Sunday night, 16 days after Michael Phelps did so at the opening ceremony.
But some nations, apparently, simply didn’t have any athletes left. Or at least they didn’t attend the Closing Ceremony.
[Related: Where will the Olympics be in 2018 and beyond?]
Of the 205 countries (207 including Independent Olympic Athletes and the Refugee Olympic Team) that competed at the Olympics and thus had flags representing them at the Closing Ceremony, 25 (plus the IOA group) enlisted volunteer flag bearers. Here’s the list, according to the official IOC document:
Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Bermuda, Qatar, Micronesia, Macedonia, Yemen, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kiribati, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Monaco, Oman, Pakistan, Sao Tome and Principe, Sudan, Suriname, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Vietnam and the British Virgin Islands.
As you can see in the picture below, the Afghanistan flag bearer (second from front) doesn’t exactly look like an athlete:
Qatar’s volunteer flag bearer is pictured here:
Right in front of Biles and the U.S. flag was the volunteer carrying the Micronesia flag:
Some of these countries, of course, didn’t have many athletes at the Games in the first place. Tuvalu only had one. Sao Tome and Principe, Kiribati and Yemen had three each. If those one or three athletes didn’t stick around for the entire 16-day event, those countries understandably had to turn to volunteers.
But other nations had more. Iran had 64. Qatar had 39. Iraq had 26. Apparently all of them had already departed Rio.
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