MONTREAL – Olympic figure skater Tina Garabedian, a McGill University graduate from Laval, Que., had the honour of serving as flag-bearer for Armenia at the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Games in Beijing, Friday.

"Bearing the Armenian flag at the opening of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was such a humbling experience," the Armenian champion ice dancer wrote on her Facebook page.

Garabedian is only the third McGillian – the first woman – to serve as a flag-bearer at the Olympics. The previous honorees, who both performed that duty for Canada, were boxer Dr. G.B. Maughan at the 1932 Los Angeles Games and track star James Worrall at the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin. Figure skater Joannie Rochette, who graduated from McGill with a medical degree in 2020, served as a flag-bearer at the 2010 Closing Ceremonies in Vancouver, five years before enrolling at McGill.

Fluent in English, French and Armenian, the 24-year-old Garabedian graduated with distinction, earning a commerce degree last year from McGill's Desautels school of management, where she finished first in her class and received a Laddie Millen Memorial Prize, awarded to the program's top three students for excellence in academics.  

Prior to university, she attended L'École arménienne Sourp Hagop in Montreal, then moved on to high school at Ecole Secondaire des Sources and CEGEP at College Gérald-Godin in Ste. Geneviève, Que., in the West Island region of Montreal. 

Garabedian, who began skating at the age of five, qualified to compete for Armenia at the Games – with ice dance partner Simon Proulx-Sénécal – last September at the Nebelhorn Trophy competition in Oberstdorf, Germany. The Montreal-based duo have been skating together since 2015 and are only the second Armenian dance couple in that country's history to qualify for the Olympics, the first since the Turin Games in 2006. They are slated to compete in Beijing on Feb. 12 and 14.

She has set up a GoFundMe account to help offset her travel and training expenses.