The Olympic Games were founded on a love of sport, unity, and competition and an ancient tradition of physical fitness. With such rich history and meaning, an event like the Olympics glows with symbolism and iconography that references its powerful themes. Two unique and well-known symbols of the Olympic Games, the five rings and the flaming torch, carry a particularly strong significance to Olympic values.
The Olympic rings—five interconnected rings in five colors, from left to right blue, yellow, black, green, and red—is perhaps the most iconic symbol of the Games. The logo was designed in 1912 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a cofounder of the modern Games. The five colors correspond to the flags of the countries that participated in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. Despite this specificity and despite many more countries having joined in the Games since the symbol’s creation, the rings now serve as a universal icon of the Olympics. Coubertin intended the rings’ connection to each other to embody a unified world. According to Coubertin, the rings also reflect a world bonded together by the goals of Olympism, a set of values highlighted in the Olympic Charter (the guidelines for the Games). Olympism encourages the fitness of mind and body, promotes teamwork and care for humanity, and exalts sport and the right for all types of people to participate and live without discrimination.
Whereas the Olympic rings are strictly a modern symbol, the tradition of the Olympic flame is one that connects the modern Games with their ancient heritage. In the ancient Greek Olympic Games, a large basin of fire was kept alight for the entirety of the ceremonies and competitions. The constant flame mirrored the theft of fire by the Titan Prometheus, humanity’s supposed creator, from the Greek god Zeus. Prometheus’s gift of the flame to humanity was said to give humankind its nudge toward civilization—for the modern Olympic Games, it represents consideration of that myth, an ode to the growth of civilization, and the ancient tradition of the Games. Modern Olympic flame tradition dates back to the 1928 Olympic Games, when the first Olympic flame since ancient times was lit. In 1936 the tradition of the torch relay began, in which a torch is lit from a basin of fire at the original location of the Games in Olympia, Greece, and runners carry it to the host country of that year’s Games in a symbolic race from the past to the present.