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RIO DE JANEIRO — Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all-time, will cap his international career by being the flag bearer for Team USA at Friday night's Opening Ceremonies for the Rio Olympics, the U.S. Olympic Committee announced Wednesday morning.
Phelps has won 22 Olympic medals, 18 of them gold, and at 31 will be swimming in his fifth Games. Normally, he has not walked with teammates at the ceremonies that open the Games, in large part because his Olympics have begun the next day with the grueling 400-meter individual medley.
This year, though, Phelps – who originally said he would retire from the sport after the 2012 London Games, only to return – is swimming a slightly trimmed-down program that focuses on shorter distances. Thus, he was available for one of the highest honors an Olympic federation can bestow on an athlete.
Phelps' first Olympics came in 2000 in Sydney, and he won his first medals four years later in Athens. In a prepared statement released by the USOC on Wednesday morning, he said carrying the flag will properly represent how he feels about his fifth and final Games.
"I'm honored to be chosen, proud to represent the U.S., and humbled by the significance of carrying the flag and all it stands for," Phelps said in the statement. "For Sydney, I just wanted to make the team. For Athens, I wanted to win gold for my country. For Beijing, I wanted to do something nobody else had done. In London, I wanted to make history. And now, I want to walk in the [Opening Ceremonies,] take it all in, represent America in the best possible way and make my family proud. This time around, it's about so much more than medals."
Phelps will appear along with other members of the U.S. swim team at a press conference later Wednesday, his only public comments before the Games begin. Fencer Mariel Zagunis, runner Lopez Lomong and basketball player Dawn Staley carried the U.S. flag at the Opening Ceremonies of the last three summer Olympics.