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SALT LAKE CITY — As soon as an Olympic athlete wins a medal, it's seemingly obligatory to head to the stands in search of their nation's flag to wrap around themselves in celebration.
Swimming, track and field, fencing, boxing, gymnastics. There isn't a sport where not just the gold medalist but the silver and bronze winners, too, drape a flag over their shoulders and spread it like butterfly wings. After American gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik earned a bronze medal in pommel horse, he donned the red, white and blue like a Superman cape.
Asked in an NBC sports interview how it happened, Nedoroscik said, "No idea. I just got announced that I was the bronze medalist, and my coach came up to me and said, 'You don't get a flag, you get a cape.'"
So, how did this flag-draping practice get started? That's hard to say.
Waving your banner all over the place
Earlier, it was more flag waving than flag wearing, at least among American athletes.
Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, became an Olympic icon after clinching the gold medal in the decathlon with a second-place finish in the 1,500-meter run when a fan ran onto the field and provided a small American flag on a stick at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal.
"What am I going to do with this?" Jenner later said was the initial thought, per ESPN. "I can't put it down, it would look unpatriotic. Creating a spectacle was the last thing I would have done. It just wasn't my style."
Jenner slowly lifted the flag in the air and waved it emphatically as the crowd roared, creating one of the most indelible images in the history of the Games.
"That moment changed the Games," Jenner would later say. "I had the flag in my hand, and it really started something."
But U.S. boxer George Foreman's flag waving preceding Jenner's by eight years.
In the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Foreman brought a small American flag to his gold medal-winning bout against Jonas Cepulis of the Soviet Union.
"When I walked into the Olympic Village, I saw a couple of athletes who looked like me. I went to speak to them, but they couldn't speak English. For the first time, I realized that the only thing that could identify us was our nation's colors. I thought that, after I win my last fight, when I bow to the judges, I am going to carry our flag. (Everyone) is going to know where I am from. I sincerely didn't think they would. I waved the flag so they knew I was American. Everyone started applauding, so I waved it higher. That is the only reason I had that flag. If I had to do it all over again, I would have had two flags in my pocket," he said, according to a 2018 account published on andscape.com.
American sprinter Carl Lewis famously took a victory lap carrying a large American flag on a pole after running to gold in the 100 meters at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. U.S. sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner did the same thing four years later at the Seoul Olympics after taking the gold medal in the 100 meters. But neither of them wore the flags around their shoulders.
How did flag-wearing start?
The practice of athletes draping themselves in their national flags after winning a medal is well-documented in recent Olympic history, but identifying how and where it began is challenging. Early celebrations were not chronicled. Even a noted Olympic historian the Deseret News contacted didn't have any insight into the practice.
It appears to be a relatively modern development in the history of the Olympics. And it might have started with fans spontaneously giving an athlete a flag.
Some point to Jim Craig, the hockey goalie who skated around the rink draped in an American flag that a fan handed him after the U.S. beat Finland in the gold medal game at the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, as the first. The iconic scene is one of the greatest moments in American sports history. The Americans made it to the final with an improbable win over the Soviet Union two days before in what became the "Miracle on Ice."
"I, as any excited American caught up in the emotion of the moment, jumped over the glass with the flag and brought it to him and draped it around him," said Peter Cappucilli, the fan who put the flag on Craig's shoulders, per ESPN.
One of the enduring images of the 1980 Games was of Craig, wrapped in the flag, searching the stands for his widowed father in order to share in the victory.
