Bearers of the Olympic Flag
Former Chinese Athletes at 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony
Aug 12, 2008
The Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee paid tribute to former Chinese Olympians and elite athletes by inviting them to be bearers of the Olympic Flag during the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
After all the delegates from the 204 participating countries/regions have entered the National Stadium, four male and four female former athletes had the honor of carrying and parading the Olympic Flag before it was raised.
Female Flag Bearers
Li Lingwei
Born in 1964, Li is a 13-time world badminton champion and is still ranked among the best in the history of the sport. She is presently a council member of the International Badminton Federation.
Pan Duo
A mountaineer born in Tibet in 1939, Pan scaled the peak of the Himalayas via the North Slope with eight male team mates on 27 May 1975, becoming the first woman to accomplish such a feat.
Pan became the deputy director of the Wuxi Sports Committee in 1981, and served on the committee until her retirement in 1999. She was thrice conferred the National Sports Honorary Medal.
Yang Yang
Currently a member of the Chinese national short track team, Yang, who was born in 1976, is a five-time Olympic medalist.
Winning the women’s 500-meter short track event at the 2002 Winter Olympics made her China’s first-ever Winter Olympics gold medalist. She is the youngest of the eight flag bearers.
Zheng Fengrong
A track and field athlete, Zheng was the first Chinese woman to break a world record. In 1957, she surpassed American Mildred McDaniel’s previous record of 1.76 meters for women’s high-jump (set at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics) by one centimeter. She was only 20 years old at that time.
Male Flag Bearers
Mu Xiangxiong
Born in 1935, Mu broke the world record for men’s 100m breaststroke three times between 1958 and 1959. He was conferred the National Sports Honorary Medal for that achievement.
Mu became a coach of the national swimming team when he was only 28, got promoted to head coach later, and did not retire until he was 60. At 73 years old, he is the oldest among the eight flag bearers.
Xiong Ni
In 1988, when he was just 14 years old, Xiong won his first Olympic medal (a silver) for platform diving in the 24th Olympiad in Seoul. The following year, he was voted by Swimming World magazine as the world’s best male diving athlete.
Xiong represented China for the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics, winning a total of three gold medals for diving.
Yang Ling
Yang was born in 1968 and started shooting when he was 14 years old. In 1996, he established his reputation internationally after winning the 10-meter moving target title both at the World Cup held in Milan and at the Atlanta Olympics (where he set a new world record).
In 2000, Yang won the 10-meter moving target event at the Asian Championships, the Milan leg of the World Cup series as well as the Sydney Olympics.
Zhang Xielin
Born in 1940, Zhang won eight medals in the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) World Championships, including gold for Men’s Doubles in 1963 and 1965 and for Mixed Doubles in 1971.
Upon retirement, Zhang coached China’s award-winning women's national team from 1972 to 1995. Zhang was conferred the ITTF Top Coach Award in 1996 and was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2001.
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