The Story Of The Olympic Flag

Added: 11/29/2007

Traditionally a flag is used as a symbolic representation of the patriotic feelings of the residents of a country and also as a marker for a nation's history. The same can be said of the various Olympic flags including the main flag that has come to represent the International Olympic Committee and the games themselves. The pride that a host city can put into an Olympic flag can make all the difference.

The flag that we know today as the flag that represents the International Olympic Committee and the games itself is probably one of the more recognizable flags in the world and its design of five different colored interlocking rings on a white background got its start in 1913 when Baron Pierre De Coubertin created the symbol using interlocking rings made of the colors black, green, red, black, and yellow. De Coubertin was a reader and student of the works of Carl Jung and he said that the rings came to mean unity and stand for the solidarity that De Coubertin was hoping the Olympic games would bring to the rest of the world. But over the years the Olympic flag was used for political gain and nothing was more evident of that than when the meaning of the Olympic flag was perverted by the Nazi regime in Germany as they saw the rings as marking the glory of Nazi Germany and attempted to use the symbol as much as possible in their hosting of the 1936 Olympic games. Through all that the Nazi's tried to establish with their perversion of the Olympic ideal the IOC flag survived and today it has come to stand for man's attempt to meet under one flag as a planet of nations to compete peacefully in athletic competition. While this has not always been the case that was the intention.

When a host city is given the honor of being a host to an Olympic games they are given a specific flag to fly at their city hall along with the IOC flag to show that they are the host of the current games. At the closing ceremonies of each Winter Olympics the host city that had just hosted the games will pass the Oslo Flag to the next host city and the IOC flag and the Oslo Flag will fly for the next four years at the next host city. When the Summer Olympics come to a close the Seoul Flag is passed on to the next host city to fly at their city hall for the next four years. But where did these specific flags for each Olympic games come from and who decides to make a flag for the games?

In 1920 the host city of Antwerp, Belgium presented the IOC with a special flag they wanted to use to commemorate the Summer Olympic games and that flag became known as the Antwerp Flag. The Antwerp Flag was passed from Summer Olympic city to Summer Olympic City until it was retired to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland after the 1988 games. In 1988 the city of Seoul, South Korea presented a new Summer Olympics flag and soon the Seoul Flag was accepted as the new Summer Olympic flag. It is not the Seoul Flag that gets passed from host city to host city for the Summer Olympics. For the Winter Olympics The Oslo Flag is used and it was presented to the International Olympic Committee by the city of Oslo, Norway after the 1952 Winter Olympic games. Today the Oslo Flag continues to be passed to the next Winter Olympic host city by the previous host city just as the Seoul Flag is for the Summer Olympics. It may be time for a new winter Olympic flag but until some host city presents a new one to the IOC it will continue to be the Seoul Flag that marks the Summer Olympics host and the Oslo Flag that marks the Winter Olympics host and both flags fly side by side with the ICO flag at the host city's City Hall.

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