From South Korea's 'Taegeuks' to 'Agitos,' What the Paralympic Games Symbol Means

After the Olympic rings, do you know the Agitos? ? These three colored commas (red, blue and green) are the symbol of the Paralympic Games.

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games are a precursor to the Paralympic Games, which will open on August 28, where everyone is hoping for the same level of excitement as the Olympic Games. For the past two weeks, the Paralympic Games ticketing website has been busier than usual. If the organizers had announced in June that the milestone of one million tickets sold had been reached, this figure would now be around 1.2 million. “We have sold more than half of the tickets,” said the president of the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee, Tony Estanguet, on France Inter on Monday, August 12. A competition that arouses curiosity, start with the symbol which is not the same as for the Olympic Games.  

A bit of history

It took a bit of time to create and find this good logo. The very first one for the Paralympic Games, in 1960, was three wheels… In reference to wheelchairs because the Paralympic Games were only allowed for people in wheelchairs. Many, many logos have followed one another. A man in a wheelchair shooting a bow for the Paralympic competition in Germany was the symbol in 1972, three rings under a character with arms in the air for Canada in 1976 and a flame, on which we read USA, for New York 1984.

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South Korea, the precursor to the current logo

In 1988, South Korea proposed a logo that was similar to the one that would be seen all over Paris. It featured five commas, in the same colors and arranged in the same way as the rings. These were the “Taegeuks”, which come from the two nested shapes found on the South Korean flag. From 1994 to 2004, this logo would be used before the committee asked for a change because it was too close to the Olympics.

© Paralympic Games

So it was in 2004 that the new logo was introduced with commas called “agitos”, a Latin term meaning “I move”. They represent the global Paralympic movement and in this case the Paralympic Games that will take place over two weeks. They are shaped like asymmetrical crescents in red, blue and green. Each agito symbolizes movement, they represent the will to never give up, the inspiration and passion that drives para-athletes. This logo was slightly modified in 2019.

Installed on the Arc de Triomphe

 Like the Olympic rings installed on the Eiffel Tower, this is another symbolic place in the capital that has been chosen to hang these agitos. The Arc de Triomphe was not chosen by chance, at the top of the Champs-Elysées while the opening ceremony of the Paralympics is to be held at the bottom of the Avenue and the Place de la Concorde on August 28. During the last editions of the Olympic Games, Paralympic agitos had been installed at iconic locations in the host cities: Tower Bridge in London in 2012, Copacabana Beach in Rio in 2016, Tokyo Bay in 2021. The agitos will remain hanging until the end of the Paralympic Games on September 8.