Olympics: Foster to Carry British Flag at Opening Ceremony

The Great Britain team have voted for swimmer Mark Foster to carry the British flag at Friday's opening ceremony. Foster, who is competing at his fifth Games, was chosen by the 313 sportsmen and women who make up the GB team.

The 38-year-old Foster, competing in the 50m freestyle, is the first swimmer to carry the British flag since Anita Lonsbrough in 1960. Foster will hope her performance that year will be a lucky omen - she won a gold medal in Rome, as did Sir Steve Redgrave in Atlanta in 1996 and Matthew Pinsent in Sydney in 2000, the years they carried the flag.

"I was blown away when I was told, it was a big surprise and a huge honor. It's fantastic," enthused Foster. "Some of the most wonderful names in British sport have been Olympic flag-bearers. I really wanted to be picked but I didn't totally believe I would be. My heart was pumping when the announcement was made. Making the Olympic Games this time around was fantastic in itself, but this has really topped it off. It's phenomenal."

Friday's "spectacular" opening Olympic ceremony will last nearly five hours, see 29,000 fireworks launched into the Beijing night sky and star British singer Sarah Brightman, organizers confirmed. Brightman, along with Chinese popstar Liu Huan, will sing a specially commissioned "theme song" at the finale of the artistic part of the ceremony, which will feature 15,000 performers, including professional artists, students and 5,000 soldiers. Organizers refused to reveal whether the song will be English, Chinese or bilingual, but said the lyrics and music were written by Chinese artists.

They were, however, more open about other aspects of the ceremony, which director Zhang Heping said would "showcase the ancient and long history of the Chinese nation". He promised that potentially contentious issues like the role of Chairman Mao in the country's history, Taiwan and Tibet would be avoided - and that culture, not nationalism, would be the dominant theme of the ceremony.

"The performance will reflect the cultural aspects of Chinese society and showcase what modern China and its people are all about," he added, before promising that the "hundreds of millions of people" watching would see "a spectacular performance".

A 75-minute "pre-ceremony" will feature folk and ethnic art before the central part of the ceremony - the artistic performance, lasting an hour - begins. There will then follow a 2½-hour parade of the athletes, with teams coming into the stadium in order of the Chinese alphabet, before China's president Hu Jintao declares the Games open.

The ceremony will close with the Olympic flame being set alight, but Zhang gave no clue as to the identity of the torchbearer. "For the lighting of the flame, the last torch bearer, this is the most secretive part and will be revealed at the very last moment," he said, claiming that the person had been chosen for their "sporting achievement" and "social influence".

Zhang said he hoped that no athletes would use the ceremony to make a political protest. "[We] hope and believe the athletes in the Olympic Games know they should not link the Olympic Games with politics," he said. "It would run against the charter of the Olympics and the spirit of the Olympic movement."