Who should be Canada’s flag-bearers for the Paris Olympics?

On Tuesday, the Canadian Olympic Committee unveiled its team of 338 athletes for the Paris Summer Games. But the COC didn’t announce who will carry the Canadian flag at the opening ceremony on July 26. That decision is expected to be revealed next week.

In the meantime, it’s our last chance to debate that classic pre-Olympic question: who should be Canada’s flag-bearer?

I offered up a bunch of candidates in this newsletter back in April, but one of them delivered some sad news yesterday. Reigning decathlon world champion Pierce LePage said he will not be able to compete in Paris due to a herniated disc in his back.

Fortunately, there’s no shortage of worthy Canadian athletes. Before I present some of my favourites, we should acknowledge that the process of choosing a real-life flag-bearer is much more complicated than it seems.

A lot of it comes down to boring stuff like transportation and scheduling. Swimmers, for example, are unlikely to get picked because many of them compete the morning after the opening ceremony. Track and field athletes have the opposite problem: their events take place later in the Games, so some of them won’t even be in Paris yet. And space can be just as big a factor as time: the women’s soccer team, for example, plays its first match the day before the opening ceremony out in Saint-Etienne, hundreds of kilometres from Paris.

Then there’s the cold reality that many athletes simply don’t want the job. The superstition of a Canadian flag-bearer “curse” has faded over the past couple of decades, but it was pretty spooky in the 1990s and early 2000s after high-profile athletes like decathlete Mike Smith, figure skater Kurt Browning and skier Jean-Luc Brassard missed the podium altogether after carrying the maple leaf.

WATCH | CBC Sports’ Jesse Campigotto breaks down Team Canada’s Paris squad:

For many, it’s better to just avoid the pressure and the hassles. And those could be more daunting than usual this time. The Paris opening ceremony features an ambitious floating parade of nations, with dozens of boats ferrying athletes six kilometres down the iconic Seine river as hundreds of thousands of spectators watch from the banks.

For today, though, let’s pretend scheduling isn’t a factor and that every athlete on the Canadian team is able and willing to carry the Canadian flag. Let’s also assume Canada will continue to follow the International Olympic Committee’s suggestion, first introduced in 2021, to select both a man and a woman to share the role. Personally, I’d also like the flag-bearers to be familiar to a lot of Canadians and have a chance to win at least one medal at these Games.

With those criteria in mind, here are two women and two men — each from a different sport — who would make excellent Canadian flag-bearers, along with a few other great candidates.

Summer McIntosh (swimming): The 17-year-old phenom is poised to become Canada’s biggest star of these Games. She’s favoured to win gold in both the 400m individual medley and 200m butterfly after capturing back-to-back world titles in those events, and is also expected to reach the podium in her other two individual events, the 200m IM and 400m freestyle. McIntosh could also take part in as many as four relay events, giving her a good chance to surpass the four medals won by Penny Oleksiak as a 16-year-old in 2016. The only hesitation I have with McIntosh is that she’ll probably be an even better pick to carry the Canadian flag at the closing ceremony after winning all those medals, so it might be better to save her for that.

Jessie Fleming (soccer): For most Canadians, the women’s soccer team’s gold-medal penalty shootout victory over Sweden was the most thrilling moment of the 2021 Tokyo Games. It wouldn’t have happened without Fleming. The fearless midfielder’s late second-half penalty kick sent Canada to a monumental 1-0 upset of the United States in the semifinals before she forced extra time in the gold-medal match with another clutch spot kick. Fleming also buried her shootout attempts in the quarterfinals against Brazil and the final against the Swedes. To boot, she was promoted to team captain after the retirement of Christine Sinclair last year.

Andre De Grasse (track and field): Speaking of clutch athletes, here’s De Grasse’s Olympic track record: six career starts, six medals — highlighted by a 200m gold in Tokyo. That’s just one medal short of Oleksiak’s all-time Canadian record. And yet, Canada’s most decorated track star has never carried the flag at an Olympic opening or closing ceremony. De Grasse would be a great pick for the latter if he gets the record, and he’ll have three chances to do so in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m. But McIntosh might overshadow him, so it’s probably a good idea to celebrate one of our greatest-ever Olympians right off the bat.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (basketball): The 26-year-old guard was the runner-up in NBA MVP voting this season after placing third in the league in scoring and leading the Oklahoma City Thunder to the best record in the Western Conference. Last summer, SGA lifted the Canadian men’s national team to its first-ever medal at the Basketball World Cup (formerly the world championship) and its first Olympic berth since 2000. Now, he’s the main reason why Canada is in the mix to capture its first Olympic basketball medal in 88 years.

Honourable mentions:

Canada’s only other reigning Olympic track and field champion besides De Grasse is decathlon star Damian Warner. His path to a repeat got easier with LePage’s withdrawal and a recent hamstring injury for world-record holder Kevin Mayer of France, who’s still planning to compete. But Warner carried the flag at the closing ceremony in Tokyo, so it might be better to give someone else a chance. If you want to stick with track and field, 800m runner Marco Arop and hammer throwers Ethan Katzberg and Camryn Rogers — all reigning world champions — would be great picks.

Even though Oleksiak has already been a flag-bearer (for the 2016 Rio closing ceremony), it might be nice to honour her again as there’s a sense that this could be her final Olympics. The 24-year-old wasn’t able to qualify for any individual events, but she’ll take part in relays.

Golfer Brooke Henderson is another solid choice. The two-time women’s major winner is appearing in her third Olympics and finished just two strokes off the podium in 2016.

Did I miss someone? Send in a comment to let me know. I also talked potential flag-bearers with CBC Olympics host Andi Petrillo on today’s Paris Pulse digital show. Watch that here.