Carrying the flag of your country at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is an honorable mission for an athlete. However, for some reason, not all participants in the competition are eager to take the banner into their own hands and happily shift this mission onto their colleagues.
Many participants in the Olympics are superstitious people. To achieve the highest result, hard training and self-confidence are not enough. It also takes a lot of luck to become the best.
Among the participants in the Olympic Games there are rumors about the "curse of the Olympic standard bearer." It is considered that the athlete flying the flag will not achieve high results in the upcoming competitions. And although most Olympians deny their belief in this sign, they still prefer not to risk it. In Vancouver, the expected standard-bearer from the Russian team, figure skater Evgeni Plushenko handed the flag to hockey player Alexei Morozov, pole vaulter Elena Isinbaeva, the first Russian woman to be entrusted with this honorable mission at the competitions in Beijing, at the last moment referred to the high workload and handed the flag to basketball player Kirill … Despite being honored to lead a team of athletes from their home country as a standard bearer, athletes do not want to risk their results.
There is one more explanation for the unwillingness to carry the banner at the opening of the Olympic Games. Special hopes are pinned on the athlete who proudly came out with the banner, representing his state. He becomes the face of the country and must not lose face. Such moral responsibility oppresses the athlete and prevents him from performing calmly. In the Soviet Union, there was even a tradition according to which an athlete who came out with a banner did not take part in competitions.
At the moment, the score between the Russian flag-bearers is 2: 2. Two gold medals against two crushing defeats. And tennis player Maria Sharapova, the former standard-bearer at the London Olympics, won a silver medal. Whether the curse of the standard bearer has anything to do with this result is unknown.
