With just a year until the Rio Olympics, take a look at the Olympic Flag – one of the world’s most recognisable symbols.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, created the five rings design in 1912.
‘The six colours (white, blue, yellow, black, green and red) combined make up the colours of all the nations, no exceptions,’ said de Coubertin.
‘Here is an international symbol.’
The pre-1951 official Olympic handbook took a different view.
Each ring represented a continent, it suggested: Europe (blue), Asia (yellow), Africa (black), Oceania (green) and the Americas (red).
With no clear evidence of de Coubertin’s intentions, however, this statement disappeared from later editions.
Two years after designing the Olympic Flag, de Coubertin presented it officially at the 1914 Olympic Congress in Paris.
Antwerp, host of the 1920 Olympics, gave a flag to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
A new flag made for the 1924 Paris Olympics was also known as the ‘Antwerp Flag’.
The IOC retired this flag at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and replaced it with the ‘Seoul Flag’.
The ‘Antwerp Ceremony’, the official handover of the Olympic Flag from one host to the next, currently uses the ‘Seoul Flag’.
The Winter Olympics still uses the ‘Oslo Flag’, unveiled at the 1952 Oslo Games.
The ‘Singapore Flag’ first appeared during the closing ceremony of the inaugural Youth Olympics in 2010.
The ‘Antwerp Flag’ mystery
The whereabouts of the original ‘Antwerp Flag’ remained a mystery for 77 years.
At a 1997 US Olympic Committee banquet a reporter spoke to Hal Haig ‘Harry’ Prieste, a 1920 men’s diving bronze medallist.
He mentioned to Prieste that the IOC had never found the 1920 ‘Antwerp Flag’. Antwerp Flag.
‘I can help you with that,’ replied Prieste. ‘It’s in my suitcase.’
Spurred on by double Olympic swimming champion Duke Kahanamoku, Prieste had climbed the flagpole and stolen the flag.
For the next 80 years it resided in Prieste’s suitcase.
Aged 103, Prieste returned the flag to the IOC in a special ceremony at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
In return he received a commemorative medal, and he passed away the following April.
The ‘Antwerp Flag’ now features in the Olympic Museum, Lausanne.
A plaque thanks Prieste for his donation.
Author: Alex Crouch (Flag Institute accredited journalist, 2015/16)
