Dennis Schröder sees the election to German flag bearer at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris on Friday not only as a personal award, but also as a great message “Of course, I represent Germany first and foremost, but it is really an important statement that we have made here,” said the basketball world champion in a video message during the German opening press conference on Wednesday.
For the black son of a Gambian mother and a German father, being allowed to carry the flag was “huge, but not only for me and my family, but also for all the people, all the children who were born and grew up here but have a foreign background.”
Being chosen as flag bearer also means a lot to him. “I would never have believed in such a moment or thought, but now I am here because I had a vision to be good at a sport,” said Schröder, who had already enthusiastically followed his basketball colleague Dirk Nowitzki as flag bearer at the Olympics in Beijing in 2008: “That is why I say: Nothing is impossible. You can do anything you put your mind to. It's huge.”
