Rio Report: The Loneliest Athletes at the Olympic Opening Ceremony

OLYMPIC PARK, RIO DE JANEIRO — When a football team travels to a major tournament, contact with the public is rare. They are ushered from privately chartered jets into executive buses and plush hotels, designed to keep them from the baying autograph-hunting masses.

It's not quite the same case with Olympic athletes. Waiting in line to board my long-haul flight from Miami into Rio on Tuesday evening, there were clearly several competitors anxious to get their antipodean preparations underway.

A tall swimmer from Finland chatted with fans intrigued by her journey. A Croatian tennis player stood out in her unmistakable red-and-white checked apparel.

The fact is there are an awful lot of athletes competing at the 2016 games. To be precise, there are 11,384 athletes, hailing from 207 countries around the world. They will be competing in 306 disciplines in which 2,488 medals will be offered across 16 days.

That's a lot of podium presentations.

Most athletes in the Olympic Village will be joined by swathes of their countrymen—apparently battling the faulty plumbing and electricity with the global sporting equivalent of the Blitz spirit.

Great Britain and Northern Ireland have sent 366 athletes, which is—according to the BBC—the biggest squad sent to an Olympiad on foreign soil since Barcelona in 1992. The USA, meanwhile, will be represented by 554 athletes in 40 disciplines. The 292 women in Brazil marks the most ever sent by any country to an Olympic Games (as per TeamUSA.org).

And China has sent more than 400 of its finest, including 45 swimmers, 11 boxers and a single equestrian competitor. And presumably his horse.

The Parade of Nations at the opening ceremony—the part where you wait a long time to see your home nation before realising they are organised alphabetically by the native language of the host—will give an insight into the overwhelming amount of athletes and disciplines at the games. But it will also highlight those tiny nations who have sent just one or two athletes to Rio to compete.

The loneliest man in the athlete parade will surely be Etimoni Timuani, who will have absolutely no arguments about who will be holding the flag of Tuvalu.

He is the nation's only competitor in Rio. 

(Fans of mathematics will note that the Tuvalu delegation is 10 times smaller than the much-heralded refugee team.)

You could be forgiven for having never heard of Tuvalu. It's a tiny Polynesian collection of islands, situated midway between Hawaii and Australia. There are three hotels and radio is the primary means of communication.

A former British colony, Tuvalu's population stands at just over 10,000—but the island itself varies in size by the day. It is one of several low-lying Pacific Islands that is threatened with flooding caused by global warming, with some predicting its eventual disappearance. However, in 2010, scientists found that Tuvalu's land mass has actually increased.

Despite Tuvalu's diminished global appeal—and potentially diminished land mass—Timuani will be competing in the event that attracts the most attention during the games: the men's 100m. However, the sprint of 11.72 seconds in Beijing last summer that brought him to Rio is hardly likely to see him go toe-to-toe with Usain Bolt. Sadly, it is unlikely that Tuvalu's one-man delegation will make it past the first round.

Curiously, sprinting is not even the 24-year-old's primary sporting focus. Timuani is also a footballer, who plays as a defender for FC Manu Laeva (who, according to Transfermarkt, boast a squad of six players). He has played for several teams in Tuvalu's amateur leagues—including some futsal outfits—and represented his country at the 2011 Pacific Games in five matches.

Yet Timuani won't be the only one looking slightly lonely at the Parade of Nations. The Republic of Nauru lies a few hundred kilometres north-west of Tuvalu and they are sending just two athletes. Nauru's Olympic Committee was started in 1990, immediately after they enjoyed success in the field of weightlifting at the Commonwealth Games.

The passion for the sport has carried through to today, where Elson Brechtefeld will compete in the men's 56kg weightlifting discipline. Joining him will be judo black belt Ovini Uera, who will fly the Nauruan flag in the 90kg competition.

But it's not just tiny Polynesian islands that are sending enough athletes to fit in a convertible sports car. Far from it.

The Central African nation of Chad is the fifth largest country on the continent and boasts more than 13 million residents, but they are sending just two representatives. Bibiro Ali Taher will be running in the women's 5000m, while fellow Olympic debutant Bachir Mahamat will be seen in the men's 400m.

Another populous African nation with just two athletes at the Games is Somalia. A population of more than 10 million has offered just two Olympic-standard runners: the alliterative pairing of Mohamed Mohamed and Maryan Muse. They will feature in the men's 5000m and women's 400m, respectively. 

The landlocked South Asian state of Bhutan will also be sending only two athletes: 24-year-old Lenchu Kunzang will be competing in the women's 10m air rifle shooting, while 26-year-old Karma Karma will be taking on the field in women's archery.

The Dominican Republic are focusing solely on the triple jump, putting all their eggs in the basket of two representatives. Thea LaFond is proficient in a host of track disciplines but will be hop, skipping and jumping along with her male counterpart Yordanys Duranona.

So, as you watch the Parade of Nations in Friday's Opening Ceremony, be sure to look out for the athletes who will have the true weight of their respective homelands on their shoulders.

Etimoni Timuani will be patiently waiting with the flag of Tuvalu until 194 other countries have been announced before him (that's how many come alphabetically before Tuvalu in Portuguese).

Nauru's pair of Olympic hopefuls will be sandwiched between the delegations of Namibia and Nepal. And Chad's duo will proudly stroll out at the Maracana shortly before China's rather more ambitious field of competitors.

These may be the loneliest athletes in Rio, but in the coming days, they have the potential to lift the spirits of entire nations.