ShareThisBEIJING -- No man is an island.
That might be true. But Nauru is a one-man island team.
During the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Itte Detanamo was the proud flagbearer for Nauru, a tiny speck in the South Pacific. But it wasn't as if too many meetings were held to decide who would do the honors.
Detanamo, a weightlifter, has made Nauru the only nation out of 204 in these Olympics with a single competitor.
"It's funny," he said of marching with no athletes behind him. "I was the only athlete. But that's how it goes."
If it goes well for Detanamo, a 330-pound super heavyweight who competes Tuesday, perhaps one day he will become president of Nauru, which has a population of 12,000 and, at eight square miles, is the world's smallest independent republic.
That's what happened to Marcus Stephen, known as "The Golden Boy." The national hero had a ninth-place weightlifting finish in the 1992 Olympics, when Nauru, which became independent in 1968, was not yet in the Olympic family and Samoa was kind enough to give Stephen as passport so he could compete.
Nauru finally got into the Olympics, and Stephen was on its first team at Atlanta in 1996.
Last year, he was elected president.
With Stephen as his inspiration, Detenamo, 21, took up weightlifting at 10. And now that Detenamo, who has an older and younger sister who also have been weightlifters, has made his second Olympic team, he's also a big hero in Nauru.
"When he walks down the street, people say to him, 'Hey champ,"' said Lou Keke, Nauru's Olympic chef de mission. "Everybody knows him."
Then again, Keke must let one thing be known.
"Everybody knows everybody else in Nauru," he said.
Nauru, its nearest neighbor Kiribati 200 miles to the east, is the world's only country without an official capital and the least populous member of the United Nations. Nevertheless, it has become known for weightlifting.
In addition to Stephen, who also competed for Nauru in 2000, there is Yukio Peter. He was eighth in the lightweight division in 2004 in Athens, the nation's highest-ever Olympic finish.
It seems better to be known for weightlifting than what long has been Nauru's claim to fame. The old joke is Nauru is full of it.
That would be bird droppings.
Due to thousands of years of guano deposits having accumulated on a 200-foot high plateau on the center of the island, the nation established a lucrative phosphate trade. In recent years, demand has fallen off and Nauru's standard of living has slipped, but Keke said it's on the rebound.
Native Nauruans are Polynesian and Melanesian. Languages spoken are English and Nauruan.
As for tourism, 80 percent of the island is uninhabitable due to the bird droppings and the beaches are just so-so. But there are two hotels.
Just don't miss your flight or it will be a long wait. Our Airline, the only airline that serves Nauru, flies just two days a week to and from Brisbane, Australia, which, with a stop in the Solomon Islands, takes 5 hours, 45 minutes.
Keke and three other Nauru representatives accompanied Detenamo to Beijing, traveling 20 hours through Brisbane and Singapore. Also on hand is his father, Vincent Detenamo, president of the Nauru Olympic Committee, and Peter, Detenamo's cousin who tagged along as his manager.
When Nauru qualified just one weightlifter to Beijing, it had to be decided who would go. With Detanamo considered to be in better shape, he got the nod over Peter.
"When I was at my last Olympics, I had a teammate with me in Yukio," said Detanamo, 14th in Athens when he was just 17. "But now it's only me. I just hope that I can have a good performance."
Nauru sent three weightlifters to Atlanta in 1996, two to Sydney in 2000 and three to Athens. It never has had a representative in another sport.
Keke said the nation could have sent a swimming and a track-and-field competitor to Beijing. But Nauru has no swim federation, and, with nobody competitive in track, it was decided to spare possible embarrassment.
Nobody expects Detanamo to embarrass himself.
"He's the strongest man in the Pacific," Tonga lifter Maama Lolohea said of Detenamo, who was first in the snatch at April's Oceania Championships and whose personal bests are 385 pounds in the snatch and 466 in the clean and jerk.
Detenamo, coached by Australian Paul Coffa, trains with fellow heavyweight Lolohea at the Oceania Weightlifting Institute on the island of New Caledonia. With so many small nations in the South Pacific, they have banded together for training, and they cheer each other on at competitions.
Guess who's president of the parent Oceana Weightlifting Federation?
That would be Stephen, who, busy running the country, couldn't make it to Beijing. But you better believe Stephen, whose greatest weightlifting moment was a second-place finish at the 1999 World Championships, will be watching when Detenamo competes.
"Most of our houses have television," Rayong Itsimaera, the nation's minister of sports, said by phone from Nauru. "I would imagine everybody will be watching."
While it's unclear what is the equivalent of the Nielsen Ratings in Nauru, figure on the numbers being off the charts.
"Hopefully, I will get in the top 10... I think I will be all right," said Detenamo, saying he won't be nervous Tuesday. "I have been competing quite so long."
Detenamo has spent much of this year training in New Caledonia. While in Beijing, the focused Detenamo hasn't yet taken in any sights.
But Detenamo will have some time to look around before he leaves China. He also will carry the flag for Nauru at the Closing Ceremonies, which is not as obvious as it sounds.
In 1996, even though it was the nation's first Olympics, all three of its athletes departed before the end of the Games. Keke was left to have to turn out the lights for Nauru.
"They all took off to go to Disneyland," said Keke, then 49. "I was the one left behind to carry the flag. I was with the medalists (from other nations), and they were like, 'What sport are you? Bowling."'
Never mind there are no bowling alleys in Nauru. There also isn't even a track, another reason why no suitable such athlete could be found.
But there are plenty of weights. If you lift them well, you might become president.
(Chris Tomasson writes for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver.)
