Four-time NBA Champion, LeBron James, has been selected by his fellow U.S. Olympians to lead Team USA as the male flagbearer at the opening ceremony for the Paris Games.
He will be the third basketball player and the first men’s player to carry the U.S. flag at the start of an Olympics in which the country is expected to send nearly 600 athletes.
The opening ceremony on July 26 is set to be an unprecedented event in Olympic history. Over 80 national Olympic committees will be represented by thousands of athletes, as they embark on a captivating flotilla sailing along the picturesque River Seine at sunset, with the iconic Eiffel Tower as their destination.
The route spans 6 kilometres (3.7 miles), drawing an estimated 320,000 spectators along the river bank. Olympic officials anticipate a global TV audience of around 1 billion.
The female U.S. flagbearer will be revealed in the coming days as the the International Olympic Committee decided in 2020 that national delegations would have a male and female flagbearers at the opening ceremony at an Olympics, to promote parity.
LeBron James and the U.S. men’s team, the four-time defending gold medalists, will begin their Olympic campaign on Sunday. Their first match will be against Serbia in Lille.