MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

World’s best female field hockey player, Argentine flag bearer at London Games

Luciana Aymar is known as the Maradona of female field hockey

Luciana Aymar, known as the “Maradona” of female field hockey, will be Argentina's flag bearer at the London 2012 Olympic Games, to begin on July 27.

The hockey player, elected seven times as the best player of the world, will be in charge of carrying the flag during the opening ceremony.

“Lucha” Aymar, about to turn 35, was elected on Wednesday by the 21 heads of the teams of the Argentine delegation at the Olympics.

The player will close her successful career at the Olympic Games, where she will fight for the gold along with the Leonas after winning the silver medal once (Sidney 2000) and the bronze twice (Athens 2004, Beijing 2008).

Tennis player Juan Martín Del Potro (ninth-seeded at the ATP world ranking) was left in second place, but will not be able to be the flag bearer during the closing ceremony, so cyclist Walter Pérez (gold medal winner at the Madison race at the Olympic Games in Beijing 2008) will, as he ended at the third place.

Aymar was nominated along with Del Potro, Pérez, basketball player Emanuel Ginóbili (who was the flag bearer at Beijing 2008), and his team-mate Luis Scola.

Meantime the coach of Argentina’s men’s hockey team Pablo Lombi ratified that Fernando Zylberberg, who was involved in a controversial video filmed in the Falkland Islands is not in the list of players that will be competing in the coming London Olympics, from July 27 to August 11.

Zylberberg, a 34-year-old midfielder is a veteran of the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and was in the Argentina side that qualified for London as Pan-American champions last year.

The television ad aired in the run-up to the London Games and featuring Zylberberg shows him running past symbolic landmarks on the Falklands, including exercising on the steps of a war memorial to British seamen from the Battle of the Falklands, ends with the strap line: “To compete on English soil, we are training on Argentine soil.”

The Argentine Olympic Committee (COA) reacted saying “…using the Olympic Games to make political gestures of any kind is not acceptable”.