• Sir Chris Hoy or Rebecca Adlington could lead out team
• Competitors vote for flag-bearer in opening ceremony
Sir Chris Hoy, Rebecca Adlington, Ben Ainslie, Paula Radcliffe and Christine Ohuruogu. Now that David Beckham's sporting mortality has taken him from Stuart Pearce's Great Britain football squad for London 2012 these candidates' prospects of carrying the flag at the Olympic opening ceremony have been enhanced.
Beckham was the bookmakers' favourite to lead Team GB into the stadium, though he was no shoo-in as the selection process involves each athlete in the GB team casting a vote. The British Olympic Association is expected to name the choice on 23 July, four days before Danny Boyle's opening ceremony, a secret rehearsal of which involving 2,000 performers was understood to have taken place at Olympic Park yesterday.
As Kate Howey, the judoka who carried the GB flag at the 2004 Athens Games, says: "Had it been David Beckham I think it would have been a bit of a shocker because you've got Olympians in there who have achieved so much. I would love it to be someone like Chris Hoy [or] Rebecca Adlington."
Among the 35 nations that have already decided their standard bearers, Japan chose a female wrestler, Saori Yosihda, Greece Alexandros Nikolaidis of taekwando and Singapore a table tennis player, Feng Tianwei. These will make the walk alongside a clutch of tennis players: Spain's Rafael Nadal, the Russian Maria Sharapova, Serbia's Novak Djokovic and Switzerland's Roger Federer.
The swimmer Mark Foster carried Britain's flag in Beijing, four years after Howey became only the third woman after swimmer Anita Lonsbrough (Tokyo, 1964) and the three-day eventer Lucinda Green (Los Angeles 1984) to carry Britain's flag.
"It was scary because you have millions of people watching and you think: 'Am I going to trip over and make a fool of myself'," she says. "But about 50m through it I thought: 'This is amazing.' I was waving and everything, I absolutely loved it. I felt so honoured to lead them out. It was unbelievable, I couldn't actually believe I'd be chosen – it was an immense experience.
"At the holding camp the week before your name is put forward and then it's whittled down to about four people and about two or three days before there was a reception with Princess Anne where they announced it. I knew my name had been put forward in the first instance for my sport and then it's an athlete thing – they get to vote. It's a voice from the athletes." Read More
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