Olympic symbols
symbols of the International Olympic Games
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) uses icons, flags, and symbols to represent and enhance the Olympic Games. These symbols include those commonly used during Olympic competitions such as the flame, fanfare, and theme as well as those used both during and outside competition, such as the Olympic flag.
The Olympic flag was created in 1914 under the guidance of Baron de Coubertin of France. It was first hoisted in Alexandria, Egypt, in Old Shatby Stadium which is now located in Al Ittihad Alexandria Club, at the 1914 Pan-Egyptian Games. The five rings on the flag represent the inhabited continents of the world (the Americas considered as one continent). It contains the colours blue, black, red, yellow, and green, which are common on national flags globally.
Motto and creed
The original Olympic motto is the hendiatris "Citius, Altius, Fortius," Latin for "Faster, Higher, Stronger" (also "Swifter, Higher, Stronger.") The motto was proposed by Pierre de Coubertin upon the creation of the IOC. Coubertin borrowed it from his friend Henri Didon, a Dominican priest who was an athletics enthusiast. Coubertin said that "these three words represent a programme of moral beauty. The aesthetics of sport are intangible". The motto was introduced at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Olympic symbols” is symbols of the International Olympic Games. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Olympic, symbols and International, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “symbols of the International Olympic Games” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q381360. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1914 and 1924.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Olympic symbols” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.