Nevin Harrison had only been an Olympic gold medalist for a month when she decided to get her first tattoo: the iconic five interlocking circles stenciled onto the side of her left wrist. The tattoo, which is just a few inches wide, cost a whopping $500, she says. Though she's convinced she was scammed, she has no regrets.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” said Harrison, who won the women's 200m canoe sprint at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. “I just wanted to do my best and draw a perfect circle.”
Harrison said one of the reasons he got the Olympic rings tattooed on his wrist was because he saw them everywhere in Tokyo's Olympic Village and wanted to take part in a tradition well-established among Olympians who have been sporting Olympic rings tattoos since long before the 22-year-old was born.
Over the past two decades, ring tattoos have become nearly ubiquitous at the Summer Olympics. They can be found on the arms, necks, torsos, ankles, and legs of athletes competing in a variety of disciplines and almost every sport. Some athletes sport large, expansive, colorful, and sometimes ornate ring tattoos that can't be missed on TV. Others opt for smaller, more subtle tattoos. But for most athletes, their ring tattoos mean the same thing: a constant reminder of the hard work they've put into their craft and the success they've achieved.
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“I definitely think it's become a rite of passage,” said Chris Jacobs, a swimmer who won three medals at the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics. “It's like a little membership card to some kind of exclusive club.”
Jacobs, now 59, is credited with starting the tattoo trend more than 30 years ago. After noticing that several Canadian swimmers, including the late Victor Davis, had small tattoos of the Canadian flag on their chests, Jacobs was inspired by another iconic symbol: the Olympic rings.
So while Jacobs was in Hawaii on his way back from the Seoul Olympics, he got a small ring tattoo low on his hip, low enough that it would be hidden under his swimsuit while he was competing. A few years later, he got another one a little higher on his hip. Then he decided to get an even bigger tattoo, and got a sizable pair of colored rings inked on the inside of his right arm.
“They symbolize a lot of things to a lot of people,” Jacobs explained, “and I guess I wanted to document that period in my life.”
Soon, swimming's biggest stars, like Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, were wearing eye-catching rings in the pool, and the trend quickly spread to other sports.
Allyson Felix, the most decorated American track and field athlete in history, wears a ring on her right ankle, Noah Lyles, the current world 100-meter champion, wears a ring on the right side of her rib cage, and the two previous women's all-around champions, Simone Biles and Suni Lee, wear rings on their wrists.
“It represents a great time in my life,” Olympic sprinter Gabby Thomas said, “and regardless of whether I continued running after that or what I did on the track after that, I'll always remember how amazing that time was and how much I learned and grew from it.”
After winning bronze and silver medals in the track and field events in Tokyo, Thomas got a black and white circle tattoo on the back of her neck. She thought about getting the tattoo somewhere more visible, or at least somewhere where she could see it, but she didn't want to see it all the time, and she didn't want people to ask about it all the time.
“What a conversation starter,” Harrison said of the tattoo. “I have the Olympic rings on my arm.”
Canoeist and kayaker Evi Leibfurs competed in her first Olympic Games in Tokyo at age 17, but waited until she was 18 to get her ring. She'd always wanted an Olympic tattoo, but couldn't decide where would be the best place to get it. “Then one day I thought, (expletive) right, I'll go to the shop,” Leibfurs says. Making a quick decision, she chose the left side of her torso.
At the other end of the spectrum are athletes like Kara Goucher, who got a ring tattoo 15 years after competing in her first Summer Olympics in 2008. “I felt like I didn't do well there,” she wrote on Instagram, crediting her son with helping her take pride in being an Olympian.
Ben Hallock, captain of the 2021 U.S. men's water polo team, said he waited seven years, explaining, “I just wanted to think about why I received the award and what it means to me.”
The tradition has even spilled over into the Paralympics, where several para-athletes have had ring tattoos, but have been asked by Paralympic organizers to remove them while competing.
Philip Dorward, a spokesman for the International Paralympic Committee, said in an email that athletes must cover up any tattoos that could be considered advertising, and that the Olympic rings fall under that definition because they represent a competing trademark. (The Paralympic logo is the agitos, which resembles three swooshes or a checkmark.)
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“As recently as Rio, the Olympics represented the entire movement,” explained U.S. para swimmer Jamal Hill, “but now, if you go to the Paralympics and have an Olympic tattoo, you have to black it out with permanent marker.”
Many athletes are finding new ways to personalize the traditional ring tattoo. Long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall has the Japanese word “Olympian” inked, with plans to add a French translation after this summer's Olympics. U.S. shooter Mary Tucker has a partial sleeve on her right arm featuring French irises and Japanese cherry blossoms as a background for the rings.
“I think it's really cool that people are incorporating Olympic tattoos into their own personal style,” said archer Casey Kaufhold, who has an arrow in the center of her ankle ring.
When it comes to Olympic tattoos, anything really goes, with one notable exception: superstition dictates that athletes should only get inked after they've actually competed in the Olympics.
There are horror stories among athletes about getting injured or ill early. Tucker said she knows at least four athletes who got tattoos early but missed out on competing in the Olympics for one reason or another. She herself scheduled a tattoo appointment in the fall of 2020 and decided not to reschedule when the Olympics were postponed a year, but said she didn't mind the risk because she had secured her eligibility long ago. The North Carolina native won a team silver medal at the 2021 Olympics.
“It's something you carry with you,” Tucker said. “It's one of the most memorable moments of your life, and you want to remember it, and remember what you accomplished and be humbled and ready to do it again.”
Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @Tom_Schad.
