Olympic opening ceremony in the live ticker: German flag bearers arrive late

Created: 2022-02-04 11:12 am

By: Antonio Jose Riether

The Olympic opening ceremony takes place in Beijing's National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest.

© kyodo/dpa

The opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics will take place on Friday evening Chinese time.

From 1 p.m. you can follow the celebrations from Beijing in the live ticker.

• The Winter Olympics are already underway, and the opening ceremony will take place on Friday (from 1 p.m. CET).

• The two German flag bearers enter the national stadium late.

• The celebrations begin at 1 p.m., and all the information is available in the live ticker.

Beijing - The German team has to wait a long time at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing before the black, red and gold flag flies in the national stadium in the Chinese capital.

The two chosen flag bearers, speed skater Claudia Pechstein and bobsledder Francesco Friedrich, will only be the 85th of the 91 participating nations to enter the so-called "Bird's Nest", as the list of organizers shows.

Olympia 2022: opening ceremony in the live ticker – German flag bearers enter the national stadium late

Curiously, the nations do not enter the arena alphabetically or according to Olympic relevance.

The position depends on the number of dashes in the first character of the country name in Chinese.

Since Germany already has 15 dashes with the "De" character, Pechstein and Friedrich have to line up at the back.

Around 75 other members of the team will be there for Germany, including 20 athletes, as the German Olympic Sports Confederation previously announced.

However, a total of 149 Germans have been nominated for the Beijing Games, many of whom did not take part in the opening due to the risk of corona infection.

Olympia 2022: opening ceremony from Beijing in the live ticker – 109 decisions at the winter games

Traditionally, Greece will arrive as the first nation to host the modern Olympic Games, which were held in 1896.

Only at the very end will the pair of flag bearers from the current host country of the Winter Games arrive.

At 8 p.m. local time, which corresponds to 1 p.m. Central European Time, the official starting signal for the much-criticized major event in the Middle Kingdom will take place.

The opening ceremony heralds just over two weeks of winter sports competitions.

By the end of the Games on February 22nd, there will be a total of 109 medal decisions in a total of 15 sports.

Germany is hoping for precious metals in many disciplines, in the coming weeks some of them will experience bitter disappointments and great victories.

(ajr)