24 Swimmers Will Carry Flags in the Paralympic Opening Ceremony

24 swimmers will carry their flags in the opening ceremony at the 2024 Paralympic Games.

Like the Olympics, the Paralympics now allow each country to name one male and one female flag bearer to the ceremonial position, though not every country did.

The list of countries that have chosen swimmers as their flagbearers include Paralympic superpowers like Japan and Australia.  Australia chose 31-year-old Brenden Hall, who is competing at his 5th Paralympics and enters the meet with six Paralympic medals competing in the S9 and SB8 categories.

Canada will send out 31-year-old Katarina Roxon, who symmetrically also is in her 5th Paralympics and also races in the S9/SB8 categories.

Other medal hopefuls who will carry flags include the defending women’s SB4 100 breaststroke champion Fanni Illes, Tokyo bronze medalist Fabiola Martinez of Mexico, Tokyo bronze medalist Dino Sinovcic of Croatia, five-time Asian Games champion Wei Soong Toh of Singapore, and Sevilay Ozturk of Turkey who won silvers in the S5 50 back and 50 fly at Worlds in 2022.

The opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games will be held on Wednesday at the Place de Concorde and will be themed around the human body and “history and its paradoxes.” The Parade of Nations will take place on the Champs-Élysées starting at he Arc de Triomphe and ending at the Place de la Concorde.

Swimmers, listed in order of marching (based on the French name of the country)

• South Africa – Kate Swanepoel
• Barbados – Antwahn Boyce-Vaughan
• Brazil – Gabriel Geraldo Dos Santos Araujo
• Canada – Katarina Roxon
• Cyprus – Karolina Pelendritou
• Colombia – Carlos Daniel Serrano Zarate
• Croatia – Dino Sinovcic
• Estonia – Robin Liksor
• Honduras – Olvin Cruz
• Hungary – Fanni Illes
• Iceland – Mar Gunnarsson
• Iceland – Sonja Sigurdardottir
• Japan – An Nishida
• Lithuania – Gabriele Cepaviciute
• Malta – Maja Theuma
• Mexico – Fabiola Ramirez Martinez
• New Zealand – Cameron Leslie
• Philippines – Ernie Gawilan
• Portugal – Diogo Cancela
• St Vincent and the Grenadines – Kentreal Timothy Kydd
• Singapore – Wei Soong Toh
• Turkey – Sevilay Ozturk
• Uruguay – Hanna Arias
• Australia – Brenden Hall