Greek basketball star Giannis Antetokounmpo is to turn out to be the primary black athlete to bear the flag for Greece on the Olympics.
The 2-time NBA MVP will carry the flag alongside race walker Antigoni Ntrismpioti in Paris on 26 July.
The Greek males’s basketball staff certified for its first Olympic Video games since 2008, after beating Croatia in front of a home crowd in Piraeus on Sunday.
The 29-year-old, who was drafted by Milwaukee Bucks in 2013 and led them to the 2021 NBA title, was in tears after the sport.
“It is an unbelievable feeling,” he stated after qualification. “Since I used to be a child I at all times wished to play within the Olympic Video games.”
His journey to turn out to be Greece’s Olympic flagbearer hasn’t been a simple one.
Antetokounmpo’s dad and mom emigrated to Greece from Nigeria. For the primary 18 years of his life, Antetokounmpo couldn’t journey exterior Greece and was successfully stateless, having no papers both from Greece or Nigeria. He was ultimately issued Greek citizenship in Could 2013, lower than two months earlier than the NBA draft.
Antetokounmpo spoke about his childhood in a latest interview with ESPN.
“I used to promote issues since I can bear in mind myself, since I used to be six or seven years outdated.
“I used to be at all times out of house attempting as a lot as I might to assist my mother and pop by promoting watches, glasses, CDs, DVDs, and the whole lot I might discover. I used to be doing that till I turned 17 as a result of I needed to. I had no different selection. After I was promoting all these issues, I used to be the very best vendor.”
However even after turning into a star within the US, Antetokounmpo encountered racism at house.
In a TNT documentary in 2020, he stated: “Greece is a rustic of white folks, life will be tough for somebody with the color of my pores and skin. Or of one other nationality. You go to lots of neighbourhoods, and also you face lots of racism.”
There was a backlash to his feedback from some in Greece, together with Konstantinos Kalemis, then-coordinator for refugee schooling within the Malakasa camp north of Athens, who used a spread of racial slurs towards Antetokounmpo and was fired in consequence.
He has additionally confronted discrimination from authorities officers.
In 2018, Adonis Georgiadis, the present well being minister, repeatedly mispronounced his identify and falsely claimed he had been born in Africa as a substitute of Greece.
Antetokounmpo can be one of many first athletes to open the Video games, as Greece – the birthplace of the Olympics – historically leads the parade.
Spyros Kapralos, president of the Greek Olympic Committee, stated there was “unanimity” within the determination for Antetokounmpo to hold the flag in Paris. He added that each flagbearers will “elevate our nation excessive”.
Antetokounmpo hasn’t publicly commented but, however merely posted a video to X exhibiting highlights from the qualifying marketing campaign with the phrase “Greece”.
