Physical Education · Ch 2 — Olympic Value Education
The Olympic Emblems
The Olympic Emblems
Each edition of the Olympic Games has its own Olympic emblem - a design that integrates the Olympic rings with one or more distinctive elements representing the host city or country. The emblems are created and proposed by the host country's Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (OCOG) or its National Olympic Committee (NOC), and it is the responsibility of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to approve them.
Purpose and design
Unlike the Olympic symbol (the five rings, unchanged since 1913), the emblem is redesigned afresh for every Games so that each host city can express its own culture, geography or history through the design while still carrying the five rings as a mark of belonging to the Olympic Movement.
Recent emblems illustrate this well. The Tokyo 2020 emblem, the "Harmonised Chequered Emblem," used a traditional Japanese indigo chequered pattern to represent diversity and connection. The Rio 2016 emblem showed three joined-hand figures representing transformation and harmony among people, land and sea. The London 2012 emblem used bold, angular shapes of the numerals "2012," aimed at a younger, digital-native audience - and was itself widely debated, showing that even the emblem can spark public discussion about what the Games should represent.