World No. 1 Roger Federer was entitled with a great honor to carry the flag of his country in Athens and Beijing Olympic Games, but this time he handed over this opportunity to his doubles partner Stanislas Wawrinka. Once again, Roger Federer was the obvious choice to carry the flag of his nation at the Olympic Games opening ceremony on Friday, but he thought otherwise and discussed it with concerned people – and finally the honor was given to Stanislas Wawrinka. Federer asserted that his gold-medal winning doubles partner deserved this opportunity.

"I felt it was important to give someone else a chance," Federer said. "I told Switzerland they should choose someone else and they then chose my partner Stan, and I think it's a great honor for him because I couldn't have won Olympic gold without him and everybody knows that. That's why I think they chose the right guy."

"I thought about it for a long time, what I should do with it when they offered it to me. First, I obviously hoped they would offer it to me and only later when I did accept it, I thought it was better for me to give it to someone else actually."

Coming off seventeenth Grand Slam title victory at Wimbledon three weeks ago, Roger Federer must be looking forward to win his maiden gold medal in singles competition. The Swiss genius will take on Colombian Alejandro Falla in his opening singles encounter, here in London Olympic Games.

Though, Federer looks huge favorite to clinch the gold here, the Swiss asserted that it wouldn’t be that easier here, as Olympics present different challenge.

“In Wimbledon we play seven matches best of five sets; here we play five matches best of three. Only the final is best of five, so that puts the margins closer to each other, I believe. If it would have been best of three in Wimbledon, I would have lost in the third round to Julien Benneteau because I was down two sets to love, so it just goes to show that here now, obviously a bad five minutes or a bad couple of points could cost you the tournament.”