Paris 2024: True meaning behind Olympic rings and how five colors are actually chosen

The 2024 Paris Olympics are officially kicking off this week, with the world's attention firmly on the French capital for the biggest sporting event of the summer.

However, many spectators may have noticed one of the most iconic symbols in sports without fully understanding its significance. Some have speculated that the five interlocked rings date back to Ancient Greece, where the Summer Games originated.

This, however, is a myth propagated by American authors Lynn and Gray Poole in the mid-20th century. In truth, the rings' origin is much more recent, having been conceived by a French Baron named Pierre de Coubertin.

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The historian, who served as the second president of the International Olympic Committee, first created the design in 1913 when fewer countries were competing. It's widely believed that the rings and their five individual colors represent each of the five inhabited continents (with the Americas counted as one).

While this may be the current interpretation, it wasn't Coubertin's original intention. Instead, the six colors (blue, black, green, yellow, red and the white of the Olympic flag) represented every color that appeared on the flags of the nations participating in the Olympics at that time.

The emblem that symbolizes every nation competing together, with unity as the core of the Olympic spirit, was meticulously crafted. "The six colors [including the flag's white background] combined in this way reproduce the colors of every country without exception," declared Coubertin in the August 1913 issue of Olympique.

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"The blue and yellow of Sweden, the blue and white of Greece, the tricolor flags of France, United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Hungary, and the yellow and red of Spain are included, as are the innovative flags of Brazil and Australia, and those of ancient Japan and modern China. This, truly, is an international emblem."

It wasn't until the 1920 Summer Olympics that the rings debuted, but their rise to global prominence came with the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Over time, the interpretation of the ring colors has evolved.

The current belief that each ring color represents a different inhabited continent is clarified in the Olympic Charter as a misconception. Regardless, the enduring message is one of universal sportsmanship and unity under a single banner.