From one flag bearer to another

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BEIJING -- Dawn Staley, an assistant coach of the U.S. women’s basketball team and a three-time gold medalist during her playing days, was chosen the flag bearer for the entire U.S. Olympic team at the 2004 Athens Games Opening Ceremony.

So she knows exactly what her successor as the U.S. flag bearer -- 1,500-meter runner Lopez Lomong -- will experience here on Friday night when he carries the U.S. flag into the Bird’s Nest ahead of the enormous U.S. delegation.

‘It’s going to overwhelm him. He’s going to walk through the stadium, it’s going to be an automatic smile,’ Staley said. ‘He’s not going to be able to hold back. It’s going to be an incredible feeling he’s not going to ever be able to duplicate.’

Staley remembers the sensation of having thousands of eyes in the stadium -- and millions around the world-- watching her as she marched. ‘The only thing that I can compare it to, and I don’t have any experience, is a royal wedding,’ she said. ‘That’s what I would think a royal wedding would be.’

Lomong was chosen by a vote of the individual team captains. A native of Sudan, he was kidnapped as a child and spent 10 years in a refugee camp in Kenya. He got a chance to live with a foster family in central New York state and attend college in the U.S. He became a citizen a year ago and earned his Beijing berth by finishing third in the 1,500 at the Olympic trials last month in Eugene, Ore.

‘Just having the experience to go through the process and knowing how it’s selected, it’s a tremendous honor,’ Staley said. ‘I didn’t have to overcome a lot of things that my fellow flag bearers had to go through. It’s always going to be special to me.

‘Lopez, I think he’s overcome so many things in his life and he’s probably best to represent our country as being the flag bearer.’

-- Helene Elliott