During the Parade of Nations within the
Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, which took place on 23 July 2021, athletes and officials from each participating team entered the
Olympic Stadium preceded by their flag and placard bearer. Each flag bearer will have been chosen either by the team's
National Olympic Committee or by the athletes themselves. For the first time, each team had the option to allow two flag bearers, one male and one female, in an effort to promote gender equality.[1]
These Olympics were postponed from 2020 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic and due security measures some countries prevented their athletes to participate on event.
Parade order
This was the first edition in which the new protocols approved at the 138th Session of the International Olympic Committee held days before the ceremony were used officially.Some rules were maintained from previous procedures, such as the obligation for the
Greek delegation to be the first to enter during the Parade of Nations and the maintenance of the entry of other delegations in the alphabetical order of the organizing country were maintained as the same entering as the last team.
However, others were changed, such as the entry of
IOC Refugee Olympic Team, composed of refugees from several countries immediately behind the Greek team.[2] Another change was the positioning of the teams whose countries will be the future hosts of the next Summer Olympic Games, which entered the reverse sequence.According to the original planning, the
United States would be the 5th delegation to enter placed between Afghanistan and United Arab Emirates delegations,but as the
2028 Summer Olympics are scheduled to be held in
Los Angeles they were placed as 204th delegation.This situation also happened with
France which according to the protocol manual would be the 151st delegation, positioned between Brazil and Bulgaria, but due to the fact that
Paris will be the host city of
2024 Summer Olympics who entered as the 205th delegation and finally the host nation
Japan.[3]
As these protocol rules were approved before
Brisbane was announced as the
2032 Summer Olympics host,
Australia was not allocated to enter before the United States team entered in its natural position in the Japanese language order between
El Salvador and
Austria. All other teams entered in between in Gojūon order, based on the names of countries in
Japanese.[4][5] The names of the teams were announced in French, English, and Japanese, the official languages of the
Olympic movement and the host nation, in accordance with
Olympic Charter and
International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines.
The
Republic of North Macedonia had previously competed under the provisional name of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, because of the
disputed status of its official name. It was officially renamed to
North Macedonia in February 2019 and the Olympic Committee of North Macedonia (NMOC) was officially adopted in February 2020. It was North Macedonia's first appearance at the Summer Olympics under its new name.[6]
Several of the nations marched under their formal Japanese names. For example, the Great Britain delegation marched under the formal name Eikoku ("United Kingdom")[7] rather than the better known informal Igirisu (イギリス), and China's delegation marched under Chūka Jinmin Kyōwakoku ("People's Republic of China") instead of the more common Chūgoku (中国).
Teams and flagbearers
On 4 March 2020, the IOC announced that each team can have the option to allow two flag bearers, one male and one female, in an effort to promote gender equality.[1]
Below is a list of parading teams and their announced flag bearer(s), in the same order as the parade. This is sortable by team name, flag bearer's name, and flag bearer's sport. This was the first time the Parade of Nations was conducted in Japanese order.
^The team's full name is Équipe olympique des réfugiés[10]/IOC Refugee Olympic Team/IOCオリンピック難民選手団.[11] The displays and announcers used the full French name, and a shortened English and Japanese name.[12]
^In fact, based on citations to other references with photos, Rio Waida eventually became the sole flagbearer for the parade of nations during the opening ceremony.
Nurul Akmal, who was originally chosen and mentioned on the Tokyo 2020 official website as the nation's de jure co-flagbearer, did not wear the traditional attire. Instead, she wore the contingent uniform and walked alongside other participants and coaches.
^ROC was sorted based on a
Japanese reading of its French abbreviation COR, シー・オー・アール (Shī Ō Āru).[65] While the English and Japanese parts of the displays both used the official English name "ROC",[66][better source needed] the delegation was announced with its expanded name Comité olympique russe/Russian Olympic Committee/ロシアオリンピック委員会Roshia Orinpikku Iinkai.
^EJ Obiena was originally chosen, but he was replaced by men's middleweight boxer
Eumir Marcial because of a new protocol that required flagbearers to be in Tokyo 48 hours before the opening ceremony. Obiena was scheduled to arrive on 23 July, the exact day of the opening ceremony.[108][109]
^Yulimar Rojas was selected and set to be flag bearer with Díaz,[117] but was not at the opening ceremony.
Karen León walked alongside Díaz at the opening ceremony, but did not carry the flag,[118] and Díaz was named as the nation's only opening flagbearer in a later interview.[119]
^These citations does not state, "Karen León walked alongside Díaz at the opening ceremony, but did not carry the flag" , "Dias was nominated as the only standard-bearer in the country in a later interview.".
^Khairul Anuar Mohamad was originally chosen, but requested to be replaced to focus for the archery competition a day after the ceremony.[133]
^Simona Halep was originally chosen, but had to withdraw due to injury.[147]
Multiple Taiwanese media outlets, as well as Japanese lawmaker
Akihisa Nagashima, reported that the Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) delegation had been specially ordered within the parade so that they would march under タta for either "Taiwan" or ambiguously "Chinese Taipei" rather than チchi or チャイchai for "Chinese Taipei".[154][155] However, it would have done this regardless of special ordering, as Chinese Taipei has paraded under "T" or its equivalent in every Parade of Nations language other than Chinese (including, for example,
PyeongChang 2018 and
Seoul 1988).
NHK, the opening ceremony's official Japanese broadcaster, also specially commented "It's Taiwan!" (台湾です!Taiwan desu!) after the stadium announcers finished announcing the name "Chinese Taipei", which also received attention from Taiwanese media.[156][157]
^In the citation, there is a description that "There is only the Burmese flag behind the" Myanmar "signboard, and there are no Myanmar athletes who will participate in the Tokyo Olympics." -
"ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအလံသာပါၿပီးကစားသမားေတြမပါတဲ့တိုက်ိဳအိုလံပစ္ဖြင့္ပြဲ..."Edv Network (in Burmese). 26 July 2021. Retrieved 22 September 2021. ကြင္းထဲဝင္ေရာက္လာတဲ့ Myanmar ဆိုတဲ့ ဆိုင္းဘုတ္အေနာက္မွာ ျမန္မာျပည္အလံသာ ရွိၿပီး တိုက်ိဳအိုလံပစ္ ဝင္ေရာက္ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္တဲ့ ျမန္မာကစားသမား တစ္ဦးမွ လိုက္ပါလာျခင္း မရွိပါဘူး။
During the Parade of Nations within the
Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, which took place on 23 July 2021, athletes and officials from each participating team entered the
Olympic Stadium preceded by their flag and placard bearer. Each flag bearer will have been chosen either by the team's
National Olympic Committee or by the athletes themselves. For the first time, each team had the option to allow two flag bearers, one male and one female, in an effort to promote gender equality.[1]
These Olympics were postponed from 2020 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic and due security measures some countries prevented their athletes to participate on event.
Parade order
This was the first edition in which the new protocols approved at the 138th Session of the International Olympic Committee held days before the ceremony were used officially.Some rules were maintained from previous procedures, such as the obligation for the
Greek delegation to be the first to enter during the Parade of Nations and the maintenance of the entry of other delegations in the alphabetical order of the organizing country were maintained as the same entering as the last team.
However, others were changed, such as the entry of
IOC Refugee Olympic Team, composed of refugees from several countries immediately behind the Greek team.[2] Another change was the positioning of the teams whose countries will be the future hosts of the next Summer Olympic Games, which entered the reverse sequence.According to the original planning, the
United States would be the 5th delegation to enter placed between Afghanistan and United Arab Emirates delegations,but as the
2028 Summer Olympics are scheduled to be held in
Los Angeles they were placed as 204th delegation.This situation also happened with
France which according to the protocol manual would be the 151st delegation, positioned between Brazil and Bulgaria, but due to the fact that
Paris will be the host city of
2024 Summer Olympics who entered as the 205th delegation and finally the host nation
Japan.[3]
As these protocol rules were approved before
Brisbane was announced as the
2032 Summer Olympics host,
Australia was not allocated to enter before the United States team entered in its natural position in the Japanese language order between
El Salvador and
Austria. All other teams entered in between in Gojūon order, based on the names of countries in
Japanese.[4][5] The names of the teams were announced in French, English, and Japanese, the official languages of the
Olympic movement and the host nation, in accordance with
Olympic Charter and
International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines.
The
Republic of North Macedonia had previously competed under the provisional name of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, because of the
disputed status of its official name. It was officially renamed to
North Macedonia in February 2019 and the Olympic Committee of North Macedonia (NMOC) was officially adopted in February 2020. It was North Macedonia's first appearance at the Summer Olympics under its new name.[6]
Several of the nations marched under their formal Japanese names. For example, the Great Britain delegation marched under the formal name Eikoku ("United Kingdom")[7] rather than the better known informal Igirisu (イギリス), and China's delegation marched under Chūka Jinmin Kyōwakoku ("People's Republic of China") instead of the more common Chūgoku (中国).
Teams and flagbearers
On 4 March 2020, the IOC announced that each team can have the option to allow two flag bearers, one male and one female, in an effort to promote gender equality.[1]
Below is a list of parading teams and their announced flag bearer(s), in the same order as the parade. This is sortable by team name, flag bearer's name, and flag bearer's sport. This was the first time the Parade of Nations was conducted in Japanese order.
^The team's full name is Équipe olympique des réfugiés[10]/IOC Refugee Olympic Team/IOCオリンピック難民選手団.[11] The displays and announcers used the full French name, and a shortened English and Japanese name.[12]
^In fact, based on citations to other references with photos, Rio Waida eventually became the sole flagbearer for the parade of nations during the opening ceremony.
Nurul Akmal, who was originally chosen and mentioned on the Tokyo 2020 official website as the nation's de jure co-flagbearer, did not wear the traditional attire. Instead, she wore the contingent uniform and walked alongside other participants and coaches.
^ROC was sorted based on a
Japanese reading of its French abbreviation COR, シー・オー・アール (Shī Ō Āru).[65] While the English and Japanese parts of the displays both used the official English name "ROC",[66][better source needed] the delegation was announced with its expanded name Comité olympique russe/Russian Olympic Committee/ロシアオリンピック委員会Roshia Orinpikku Iinkai.
^EJ Obiena was originally chosen, but he was replaced by men's middleweight boxer
Eumir Marcial because of a new protocol that required flagbearers to be in Tokyo 48 hours before the opening ceremony. Obiena was scheduled to arrive on 23 July, the exact day of the opening ceremony.[108][109]
^Yulimar Rojas was selected and set to be flag bearer with Díaz,[117] but was not at the opening ceremony.
Karen León walked alongside Díaz at the opening ceremony, but did not carry the flag,[118] and Díaz was named as the nation's only opening flagbearer in a later interview.[119]
^These citations does not state, "Karen León walked alongside Díaz at the opening ceremony, but did not carry the flag" , "Dias was nominated as the only standard-bearer in the country in a later interview.".
^Khairul Anuar Mohamad was originally chosen, but requested to be replaced to focus for the archery competition a day after the ceremony.[133]
^Simona Halep was originally chosen, but had to withdraw due to injury.[147]
Multiple Taiwanese media outlets, as well as Japanese lawmaker
Akihisa Nagashima, reported that the Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) delegation had been specially ordered within the parade so that they would march under タta for either "Taiwan" or ambiguously "Chinese Taipei" rather than チchi or チャイchai for "Chinese Taipei".[154][155] However, it would have done this regardless of special ordering, as Chinese Taipei has paraded under "T" or its equivalent in every Parade of Nations language other than Chinese (including, for example,
PyeongChang 2018 and
Seoul 1988).
NHK, the opening ceremony's official Japanese broadcaster, also specially commented "It's Taiwan!" (台湾です!Taiwan desu!) after the stadium announcers finished announcing the name "Chinese Taipei", which also received attention from Taiwanese media.[156][157]
^In the citation, there is a description that "There is only the Burmese flag behind the" Myanmar "signboard, and there are no Myanmar athletes who will participate in the Tokyo Olympics." -
"ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအလံသာပါၿပီးကစားသမားေတြမပါတဲ့တိုက်ိဳအိုလံပစ္ဖြင့္ပြဲ..."Edv Network (in Burmese). 26 July 2021. Retrieved 22 September 2021. ကြင္းထဲဝင္ေရာက္လာတဲ့ Myanmar ဆိုတဲ့ ဆိုင္းဘုတ္အေနာက္မွာ ျမန္မာျပည္အလံသာ ရွိၿပီး တိုက်ိဳအိုလံပစ္ ဝင္ေရာက္ယွဥ္ၿပိဳင္တဲ့ ျမန္မာကစားသမား တစ္ဦးမွ လိုက္ပါလာျခင္း မရွိပါဘူး။