The Olympic Flag: Unity, History, and Ambition.

Rob Bell:
Hello, and welcome to Sketchplanations The Podcast.

Chats about facts and ideas to help fuel your own interesting conversations.

I'm engineer and broadcaster Rob Bell, and with me is designer and creator of Sketchplanations, Jono Hey, and entrepreneur and past winner of The Apprentice, Tom Pellereau.

This time in the build up to the Winter Olympic Games, we're talking about the Olympic flag.

Hello, gents.

How are we doing?

Tom Pellereau:
Good, thanks.

Jono Hey:
Very good.

Yeah, very good.

Did you just make up chats about facts?

It's really good.

Rob Bell:
No, I didn't make it up.

I scripted it earlier in the day.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I liked it.

Rob Bell:
I liked it.

Jono Hey:
I don't think I've ever heard that before.

Chats about facts.

Rob Bell:
Now, I know you're both fans of winter sports.

Are you excited about the upcoming winter games in Milano Cortina, Italy?

Jono Hey:
I mean, it's always quite fun to see some stuff going on in the background and see how people are doing and see the crazy jumps and all the crazy sports where they rocket down things at crazy speeds.

That's quite fun.

Rob Bell:
Okay, so I'm not getting the full excitement from you, Jono.

I'm just like, yeah, it's all right.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I don't like to sit and make it a major part of my sporting calendar.

Tom Pellereau:
The Winter Olympics, my kids really adore skiing and winter sports.

So unfortunately, I don't have the opportunity to just sit around all day watching them as I would absolutely love to.

But I can't wait to see the highlights each evening.

And Ski Sunday is back on BBC on Sunday nights as well, which is cool.

So yeah, winter sports, huge fan.

Rob Bell:
I love the Winter Olympics.

I almost prefer them to the Summer Games.

Tom Pellereau:
Really?

Rob Bell:
I genuinely love them.

All the speed stuff, anything.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I love it.

Tom Pellereau:
Anything that could involve a big crash, I think is what you were going to say, wasn't it?

Jono Hey:
So impressive, isn't it?

Rob Bell:
Before we wander off on our love of snow and mountains, Jono, please can you tell us about the genesis of today's topic, the Olympic flag, the Olympic flag that is globally recognized, right?

Jono Hey:
Genuinely, it's quite impressive.

I partly did a sketch because I didn't know that much about it, but I think I read a rumor that the rings stood for something, and maybe there was something in the colors, and so it was coming up to the Olympics last year.

Most of the time, I do, I'd say, like topics which are timeless and not connected to what's going on.

But this time was definitely topical in the sense that the Olympics was coming up, and I was thinking about the Olympics, and I was thinking about the flag, and I should find out what that is.

And what it's about, and that's why I went to go look for it.

And it's really interesting.

There's loads of stuff on the Olympics and the Olympics flag.

And it's got quite a fascinating story.

But I mean, the bottom line is this sketch and what I felt like was worth getting across.

Because I think most of us are probably familiar with the Olympic flag.

It's some rings on a white background, coloured rings on a white background.

Rob Bell:
That's how you'd best describe it.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

And so the idea that I wanted to get across was that in reading about it, I learned that the rings symbolise the five continents that were engaged in what the founder of the Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, calls olympism, which is competing against each other to try and be the best that you can be.

And of course, it's interesting, it's got five continents.

But and then also this lovely symbolism that they're interlaced.

So there's not just five rings, but we're interlaced.

And that was about the unity in the meeting of athletes from all these parts of the world coming together.

And then also the colours, which certainly when it was made, were chosen partly because you can look at every flag in the world and at least one of these colours will be in those flags.

Rob Bell:
Including the white background, that's on your sketch, right?

Jono Hey:
Yes, white was one of them.

Rob Bell:
So, the six colours, which are the blue, yellow, black, green, red circles.

Jono Hey:
That's right.

Rob Bell:
Plus the white of the background.

If you put all of that symbolism together, it's a really clever piece of design, right?

Jono Hey:
And I think it's quite amazing.

And if you read some of the things, I linked on the sketch to an article about it.

And growing up in the 80s, let's say, the Olympics was something that has existed for years and years, and it just feels timeless.

And you have this sense that it goes back to the Greeks.

But actually, it started around the turn of the 20th century, and it was started by Pierre de Coubertin.

Rob Bell:
The modern Olympics.

Jono Hey:
The modern Olympics, sorry, yeah.

And it just seems inevitable, but it's not at all.

It wasn't a thing before that.

And what was remarkable about the flag, like you said, about a very clever piece of design, it was also designed by the founder of the Olympics, the modern Olympics, which I thought was quite amazing.

He didn't even hire a designer to do it, just made this flag.

And you read some of the letters he sent about the early flag, he's really confident.

He was like, we needed a flag.

This is the flag.

It will be recognized everywhere, and it will symbolize this, and everybody will be drawn to this symbol.

And he was right.

Rob Bell:
I think he's achieved it.

Jono Hey:
It's really impressive.

Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Pierre de Coubertin is quite a character.

When you start to dig in about him and his history and his past, and then his involvement in the Olympic Games as well.

Jono Hey:
You know a bit about him and the Olympics, is that right?

Rob Bell:
Well, so partly why I'm really excited to do this as well.

A, the Winter Olympics is just coming up, but B, last summer, I shot a whole series about the Olympics and Olympic history over at the Olympics Museum in Lausanne, which is the center of the Olympics, of the modern Olympics, so the International Olympic Committee is based there, the Museum is there, which is a fantastic visit for anybody who's going that way.

Yes, we filmed a 10-part series over there, which I'll give a little plug for, it's called The Vault, and it's all about Olympic history and going through the archives of the Olympic Museum, of which they've got hundreds of thousands of artifacts from over a century of Olympic Games now, summer and winter.

We're speaking with the curators about the history and the significance of all these different artifacts and pieces.

It's one of the best shows I've ever made, and you can watch it at olympics.com.

Look for The Vault.

I'll link to it in the show notes below.

Genuinely, it was really, really fun, and I did discover some amazing things about Pierre de Coubertin as well.

Unsurprisingly, he is quite celebrated within the, at the Olympics Museum, I should say.

Jono Hey:
So what sort of a character was he to bring this together?

Rob Bell:
There's some bits here that I'm about to say that I didn't know before researching this podcast, that was even more inspiring, really.

His idea for reviving the Olympics was fueled by a new archaeological discoveries at Olympia in Greece, which kind of ignited his interest.

But he also had a deeper philosophical drive that sport could morally and physically re-educate the French youth, because at this time from about 1880 onwards and the modern Olympic games started, as you say, at the beginning of the 1900s, France went through a bit of a restructure of its education system, and he felt that sport should be a big part of that.

So part of what he did, he came up with the Olympic flag, he wrote the Olympic Charter, which is kind of a set of rules and principles that the games and participants need to adhere to.

That's still in place today.

He also proposed the motto, which is Citeus Alteus Fortius, faster, higher, stronger.

He's also an Olympic champion.

Jono Hey:
Amazing.

Rob Bell:
He is a literary gold medalist.

Jono Hey:
Thank you, pardon.

Rob Bell:
In the early modern Olympic games, there were competitions in speed reading, art, architecture, writing.

There were two others.

I can't remember what they were in the artsy cultural part of the games.

Under a pseudonym, he would submit pieces of writing, and he submitted a poem called Aude du Sport, which I read in this series.

I read from his original book, so an Aude to Sport.

He wrote it originally in French.

I think he also wrote it in English or translated it himself into English.

That was at the 1912 Games, and under a pseudonym, he won a gold medal for that.

Jono Hey:
He's a heck of a chap.

Rob Bell:
He really is.

Jono Hey:
It's always a bit suspicious when the organizer wins a gold medal, isn't it?

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, for an event which is sort of very subjective.

You're not being the fastest.

You're writing something.

Rob Bell:
Is it a bit like at your birthday party as a six-year-old when you win pass the parcel?

Hang on.

Sounds a bit fishy here.

Jono Hey:
We did a drawing for a free holiday day at work and the CEO was drawn out for a free holiday day.

Rob Bell:
Come on.

Tom Pellereau:
That's a great idea, by the way.

I might have to do that one.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, that's a good one.

I read about the motto as well as the flag, with the faster, higher, stronger, and I also read that it was adapted more recently to add communito, I think, in the end, which is together.

Yes.

I think the idea was it was all about continual improvement, and you are coming together as meeting of athletes, but it's not all about the competition.

The faster, higher, stronger is about raising a new bar every time.

I was thinking about people versus physics.

I think that's with Olympics, isn't it?

It's like, what can we do as a species in this world of physics is quite amazing.

Rob Bell:
It is.

Jono Hey:
I had no idea that he did all that stuff.

I remember reading that he came up with this flag and has just had this vision for this competition and everything.

I mean, just the sort of incredible confidence.

You imagine how proud you would be about what you created all these years later.

Rob Bell:
Absolutely.

I mean, unfortunately, for him, there's nobody to be proud because he was the end of the line of the de Coubertin.

Jono Hey:
Oh, right.

Rob Bell:
His only child died before he did.

So that was it.

That was the end.

Something you mentioned there, Jono, about the evolution of the motto.

There's also been quite a bit of evolution in the program of the games as well.

So, for example, we no longer have a gold medal for literary endeavors, but sports and events, you might say, within the sports do change and fluctuate over the years as well for both the winter and the summer Olympics.

So sometimes sports will go and sometimes sports will appear.

That happens quite a lot.

Jono Hey:
We loved all the skateboarding and mountain biking kind of ones.

Tom Pellereau:
Climbing.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Relatively new, those.

Yeah.

Jono Hey:
When I thought about doing the sketch, because obviously the main thing was to explain what the flag meant.

Rob Bell:
Yes.

Jono Hey:
But I did think the original vision in my mind was I was going to surround it with little icons of all the sports that go in.

And I thought about it.

Well, first of all, I think in the summer one, there was 32 different sports, which is quite a lot anyway.

And then if I thought about the sports, I was like, well, how many events are there?

And there's just enormous numbers.

I think there's over 300.

Rob Bell:
300, yeah.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

You think of all the little division.

It's not just running, right?

It's steeplejays and hurdles and relay and speed walking and marathon.

It's everything, men, women, mixed, all sorts going on.

So yeah, it's quite overwhelming actually when I thought about drawing all the sports and the events around it and where you would divide them up.

Rob Bell:
There are a lot.

Jono Hey:
I didn't even think about the Winter Olympics for that.

Because well, I guess it was the summer.

Rob Bell:
No one ever does.

Tom Pellereau:
But in terms of iconography, the flag itself, the fact that it doesn't even say Olympics on it.

It doesn't describe itself at all.

It is just purely five rings, five colors on this white background.

The fact that it is so unique, so easily recognizable, so different from a lot of other things.

It was quite interesting when you say it's created from early 1900s in the fact that a lot of the tube stuff, which is also very iconic.

So the round tube logo came out about 1910 and then later on the map, which is 1930.

But it's clearly a time where really amazing iconography and we're coming out and becoming strong, probably with the advent of mass media and that sort of stuff, able to then spread these messages across and clear logos were obviously very powerful and able to spread at that time.

And now, as you say, Rob, I can't imagine a time where the Olympics didn't exist, but it's actually only 110 years old, the modern in terms of the Olympic rings, it's fascinating.

Jono Hey:
In terms of a logo, it really is like that because I hadn't really realized, I sort of felt like the Olympics belongs to everyone.

But that's not the case.

And actually, like when I was thought about doing this, it's not like you can just pick five circles and a slightly different red or green or yellow.

And you can't have them, a fat circle or a thin circle.

They have to be the right thickness.

And even the surrounding white needs to be roughly in proportion to the rings, just like you would have with a logo.

And also, I normally do prints for my sketches.

And I realized that actually, I can't do a print for the Olympics because it's owned.

I went and checked all the rights very carefully.

And they have some sort of educational provisions that enables you to share something like this.

But actually, they're very careful about usage of it, which obviously makes sense because it is an incredible brand.

Rob Bell:
Yes.

And the values of that brand are protected.

Jono Hey:
Exactly.

So they look after it.

And you should do if you have something like that.

Rob Bell:
Can we talk about the five rings for the seven continents of the world?

Tom Pellereau:
Hmm, yeah.

Rob Bell:
Well, I know that's something that I've questioned before, and it's possibly something that listeners might query as well.

Tom Pellereau:
Especially as there's space for two more at the top.

Jono Hey:
So we should bear in mind that one of the continents is Antarctica.

Rob Bell:
Yes, so uninhabited, pretty much.

Well, there is no countries in it.

Jono Hey:
Penguins and scientists, right?

So, yeah, and they're of all different nationalities anyway.

So one of them is Antarctica.

And also, when he created it, it was said as the five continents who were embracing Olympism, as he said.

And he put it down in one of the letters that I read of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania.

And it's actually quite interesting because when I posted this not too long ago on Instagram, I had quite strong reactions to using the Americas.

Rob Bell:
The Americas.

Well, that's the one that stands out, obviously, because it's North America and South America.

Jono Hey:
North America and South America, yeah.

Rob Bell:
When we're about seven.

Jono Hey:
And actually that writing the Americas was not even correct.

But this was, to my knowledge, his original understanding of the continents that were doing this.

Rob Bell:
Do not have a dig at Jono about this.

This is not, they're not his words.

It's not his flag design.

Jono Hey:
Pierre de Coubertin, it was back in 1905 or something.

Rob Bell:
And his backward view on the world, yeah.

Jono Hey:
No, so it does seem a little bit not quite right these days.

Rob Bell:
Six would be tricky, though.

Tom Pellereau:
You could put another one at the bottom very easily, make a triangle of circles.

Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Well, the interesting thing about the five also, which I hadn't really thought about until I drew this, is that there is a right way up for the Olympic flag, which is that you have the three circles at the top.

And I don't know if you remember the Paris Olympic Games, there was a brief time in the opening ceremony when the flag was raised upside down.

Rob Bell:
Is that right?

Jono Hey:
Which was apparently just an error, but everybody was reading all sorts of things into the symbolism of raising the flag upside down.

But I believe it was just an error.

But yeah, so it does have a right way up, the three at the top.

Rob Bell:
That's interesting.

Jono Hey:
But the colours don't apparently map to any of the continents, they just represent colours of the flags in general of the world.

Rob Bell:
Talking of flags at the Olympics, in more recent years, I think it might have been from Rio 2016, you had the introduction of the Refugee Olympic Team.

And then in Paris, you had the, it's in French, but the Atletes Individuels Neutres, so neutral participants, which was a teal flag with a circular emblem.

And there were Russian and Belarusian athletes competing as individuals, not for any national team, and there was no anthem played.

But by doing this, I think they did pretty well too as a group.

So that's the point, they weren't coming to the Olympics as individuals, they were coming as this united team, and the flag was that symbol of them as a team, you know, that togetherness again.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Which is what they are, Jono, you mentioned earlier, which is what the Olympics is all about.

Jono Hey:
They used the Olympic flag, did they?

Rob Bell:
No, they used a separate flag.

So most recently in Paris, it was a teal coloured flag with a circular emblem on it.

Jono Hey:
I'm not sure teal is in the Olympic flag, is it?

Rob Bell:
Although they've gone against their own founder there then.

You're right.

Jono Hey:
Rats.

Rob Bell:
Oh dear.

Jono Hey:
I've forgotten about that.

Yeah, brilliant.

Rob Bell:
That is a really important thing.

Again, we did something on this in the series about the fact that even though they were coming as neutral individuals, they weren't participating as individuals.

They had their own team, just not a national team.

Jono Hey:
It's quite a lovely thing.

I think about this with all the sort of global sporting competitions, like the World Cup and football as well.

But Olympics more than anything, it's sort of beautiful that we keep coming together as a race to do this.

Humans versus each other, but also against physics.

And despite all the stuff that's going on in countries, generally speaking, Olympics have, apart from during the World Wars, my understanding is the Olympics have taken place.

It seems like it can only be a good thing.

Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Mentioning the war, there's a great story that came up.

I was looking at posters in Lausanne, because they've got an amazing collection of posters and archivist posters, as you would imagine.

I saw two posters of Olympic Games that never happened, but there were fully designed and printed A1, probably larger posters for these games.

One was Tokyo, which was selected as the host city for, it would have been the 1940 Olympic Games, I think it was.

So in 1936, they were selected as the host city, Tokyo, and it was a historic decision at the time, because it would have been the first non-Western city to host the Olympics.

So the games were scheduled for 1940.

But then because of the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese war in 1937, the Japanese government determined that they couldn't host the games.

And so they forfeited.

So then the host city that came second in the kind of selection of cities who had bid for the games in 1940 was Helsinki.

So they were awarded the games and preparations were all under way.

They kind of built the Olympic Stadium and then December 1939, they had to pull out because of the outbreak of the Second World War across Europe.

But there was significant advance made in terms of the preparations for these games.

It was really cool seeing these posters.

Hang on, Tokyo 1940.

I don't know, Helsinki 1940.

Tom Pellereau:
How could it be in two places at the same time?

Rob Bell:
It never happened.

Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I read there were three that didn't take place.

I think it was 1916, 1940 and 1944.

But other than that, it's a pretty good record of showing up, isn't it?

Tom Pellereau:
The COVID one was delayed a year, wasn't it?

Rob Bell:
The Tokyo 21.

That took place.

Yeah.

So 2020.

And then after the second mobile, it was London though, wasn't it?

Yeah.

In 48.

Tom Pellereau:
Olympia.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
There's the swimming pool.

Rob Bell:
Here we are.

We're just going through some...

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Let's do each one.

Tom Pellereau:
We love this stuff.

Rob Bell:
Can I bring it back to the flag?

Can I bring it back to the flag and the logo?

Jono Hey:
Certainly can.

Rob Bell:
And another thing that I saw at the Olympics Museum was another poster.

And I've read up about this since, but so this was a poster for the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina.

So in Italy, again, where they're going to be held in a couple of weeks' time.

It's quite a rare poster, I was told.

They were kind of fixing it up.

They've got the studios and the labs they have down there to do all this stuff is just great.

They have the perfect tool for all of the jobs for fixing little tears or whatever it might be on the posters.

It's beautiful to see.

So I saw this poster from 1956 and it was pointed out to me by the curator where the circles interlink, printing technology at the time didn't really allow them to do that very well.

And so there was some overlapping where it shouldn't have been, you know, where the black goes on top of the, let's have a look at my flag, where the black ring goes on top of the green ring.

You'd actually have a little bit of bleed from the green on top of the black.

It was some interesting bits that was pointed out to me about that.

But then I also read that, I think it was around 1960, that the logo itself was slightly redesigned to allow for printing technology, to be able to print it well without that kind of bleed.

And then as printing technology has evolved, we've come back to the fully interlinked designs again now.

Quite interesting.

I mean, it would have been very, very subtle changes that were made that you probably wouldn't have picked up on, but they were officially accepted changes.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, it's one of these ones, a bit like somebody asked you to draw the Union Jack, like the UK flag, where you kind of know what it looks like.

But if you had to draw it, you're suddenly like, actually, what exactly does it look like?

And then same with this.

You're like, oh, yeah, it's like five circles.

And you start drawing it and you're like, this one goes over that one, under that one, hang on.

And you have to go look it up.

It's quite surprisingly subtle when you get in there trying to draw it.

Rob Bell:
You did very well, Jono, in your in your replica.

Very well.

Jono Hey:
I found one and looked at it very closely.

Rob Bell:
What a great piece of design.

Anything else anyone wants to add about the Olympic flag?

Jono Hey:
I want to go watch your Olympics program now.

Rob Bell:
Oh, you really should.

Jono Hey:
So many fascinating stories over the years from the Olympics.

Rob Bell:
It's brilliant.

It's called The Vault because we were down in the vaults of the Olympics Museum.

It's at olympics.com.

Jono Hey:
Brilliant.

Rob Bell:
The Olympic Channel.

Tom Pellereau:
Lovely design.

Really something to behold, isn't it?

Jono Hey:
There are not many designs.

It's barely changed in 100 plus years, you know.

And I know flags have some durability, but like as a logo as well in this sense, it's really lasted very well.

Credit to Mr.

Coubertin.

Tom Pellereau:
And I believe because a lot of people might be like, didn't they just copy the Audi logo?

So apparently the Audi logo is about 20, maybe even 30 years later.

It's not just like they didn't rip each other off, as it were.

Rob Bell:
Oh, I should also say, I think the flag from when this was first used at an Olympic Games, unsurprisingly, is at the Olympics Museum in Lausanne.

Tom Pellereau:
Of course.

Rob Bell:
There we go.

Right, Jono, Tommy, thank you very much and thank you all for listening.

I don't know about you, but I can't wait for the Winter Games to begin.

And along with everybody else for those two glorious weeks, I will also become an armchair expert on the intense strategies and tactics of sliding Scottish granite along a 50-metre sheet of ice.

Go Team GB, go well and stay well.

Tom Pellereau:
Goodbye.

Jono Hey:
See you.

Rob Bell:
All music on this podcast series is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find many more tracks at franccinelli.com.