Steve Nash was asked June 24 who he thought would light the cauldron at the Pan American Games Opening Ceremony.
The question clearly caught him unprepared. Nash stumbled and mumbled at first.
“Wayne Gretzky,” he eventually said in a telephone interview for this Olympic Q&A, “but there are so many great candidates. Sometimes it’s not the most high-profile athletes.”
Nash was wrong, but maybe he knew all along. It wouldn’t be Gretzky lighting the cauldron in Toronto on Friday night. But it was very much a high-profile athlete.
Nash was the man tapped to light the Pan American Games cauldron at the Opening Ceremony, receiving the flame from the next great Canadian basketball star — NBA Rookie of the Year Andrew Wiggins (who had received the flame from his mom, 1984 Olympic 400m runner Marita Payne-Wiggins).