During the Parade of Nations at the

opening ceremony An opening ceremony, grand opening, or ribbon-cutting ceremony marks the official opening of a newly-constructed location or the start of an event.

of the

2008 Summer Paralympic Games The 2008 Summer Paralympic Games (), the 13th Summer Paralympic Games, took place in Beijing, China from September 6 to 17, 2008. As with the 2008 Summer Olympics, equestrian events were held in Hong Kong and sailing events in Qingdao. It was f ...

, athletes from each participating country paraded in the stadium, preceded by their flag. The flag was borne by a sportsperson from that country chosen either by the National Paralympic Committee or by the athletes themselves to represent their country. It is considered a great honour to bear the country's flag in the Parade of Nations.

Parade order

Per tradition, the host country, in this case the People's Republic of China, marched last however contrary to tradition in the Olympic Games the national team of Greece did not enter first. All other nations marched in name order in the language of the host nation, which in this case is the Chinese language. As Chinese is written in characters and not letters, the order of the teams' entry was determined by the number of strokes in the first character of their respective countries' Simplified Chinese names. Countries with the same number of strokes in the first character are sorted by those of the next character. This made

Guinea Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...

(几内亚) the first country to enter, as it takes two strokes to write the first character in the country's name (几), and Zambia (赞比亚) last-but-one, ahead of China.

List

The following is a list of each country's flag bearer.

Sources

Official list
on the website of the

International Paralympic Committee The International Paralympic Committee (IPC; german: Internationales Paralympisches Komitee) is an international non-profit organisation and the global governing body for the Paralympic Movement. The IPC organizes the Paralympic Games and fun ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:2008 Summer Paralympics National Flag Bearers Flag bearers Lists of Paralympic flag bearers

Parade order

List

See also

Sources

References