Yesterday I posted a (pretty lightweight) blog entry about the plight of British Paralympic champion Josef Craig, who had been prohibited from competing with an Olympic rings tattoo on his chest.  The post linked to a swimming blog (and also appeared on Swimming World magazine's site, where I first found it), as well as a BBC article.  The way the post was written, along with the links to further coverage, would seem to encourage folks to read more about the issue on their own, but that doesn't always work. 

Complainants (via Facebook, Messenger, and anonymous forums, and not quite all displaying the usual online negativity and overstatement) felt that the post was a non-story and untrue, but beyond the fact that the way the blog post reads would automatically disqualify it from being read as a definitive account of any kind, I actually disagree pretty strongly.  

First, contrary to some reactions and comments found in many places, Craig absolutely was prohibited from competing; he was DQ'd from the S8 100 freestyle after the prelims and before the final due to the rings tattoo. He was later allowed to compete in the S8 400 relay (a different event) after he covered up the rings.

More broadly, however, the assumed ownership of athletes' images and bodies by bureacratic governing "bodies" is a real issue.  In fact, it seems to me this story is worse than it seemed at first, inasmuch as the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) sees the Olympic Games as a competing brand.  So in fact, it is Paralympic athletes who need to be careful about rings tattoos, as they constitute advertising for the Olympics when appearing on an athletes' body at an IPC event.

This all begs the question of whether any Olympic athlete believes that they are putting an advertisement on their bodies when they get a rings tattoo.  Notwithstanding the IOC's occasional enforcement of their ownership of the rings trademark, is there anyone who actually sees it as such?  I would venture that few or no athletes do.

(This does not even account for the massive complication presented by the fact that the IOC actually encourages "Olympic" athletes to get the same tattoo, while "Paralympic" athletes cannot do the same - which seems to suggest that the IPC does not want their athletes identifying as Olympians, a subject far too large to address here.)

The question of where the branding problem stops is also not clear; if you win the NCAA Championship and get an NCAA tattoo, or your school logo or mascot tattoo, or whatever example you want to use, will this be a problem as well if you continue to compete?  What if you founded your own successful company, and you get a tattoo of it?  How about a Grateful Dead lightning bolt scull... uh, skull? While the IOC also enforces restrictions against advertising in the form of tattoos, are marks like these not far more an expression of your identity and achievements than an advertising ploy?    The range of possible examples and potential objections very quickly swarms into the absurd (viz., Is a Matt M. tattoo now a boatmaker ad?).

More troubling than the argument over what is and is not an objectionable corporate logo or trademark is that fact that, as with the British swimmer, enforcement tends to affect athletes, and not anyone else, and almost always right in the middle of competition, sometimes with very little or no warning or consistency (in Craig's case, only after he had already raced in the 100m prelims).  That these rules tend to be devised and enforced upon mostly near-broke athletes by gargantuan, monied, all-powerful (and often tax-exempt) organizations is another topic for another time, and one that has been debated endlessly with respect to collegiate athletics and the NCAA in the United States, so we probably don't need to reiterate the issues here.

In our own sport, a recent example was the enforcement of FISA's Rule 50 at the Olympic rowing trials two weeks ago, where there were reports of discussions and requirements (some on the launching dock right before their race {!}) about getting get a piece of tape to cover brand mark on sunglasses, or to cover up a small fillip in a boatmaker's signature stripe that was deemed a little too big, and other issues.   (This also likely explains the inside-out unisuits.)  That USRowing's documentation states that they do not use FISA Rule 50, but instead apply the far more permissive rule 3-203 (which you can find on page 41 here) can be assumed to have complicated the situation, both for the athletes and for the officials who were charged with interpreting and enforcing the rules.

The problem is hardly limited to domestic regattas; similar enforcement (in this case of uniform rules, governed by Rule 51, natch) at the starting line at the World Championships the past few years resulted in significant criticism that was finally addressed in part because enforcement required a female competitor to partially disrobe at the starting line; that is what it took for the implications of these rules for the actual athletes to get a more serious review.

(Even at less exhalted levels of rowing, uniform rules can get tricky.  A few weeks ago I learned of a high school program that, after changing unisuit vendors due to cost savings for an item that the athletes are required to purchase themselves, encountered problems with uniform rules because the newer members of the team had one unisuit, and the longer-term members of the team had another unisuit of a different brand that looked a little bit different.  They were warned that the differences would jeopardize their eligibility to compete, and as a result families were required to buy another unisuit before the end of the year - in some cases for graduating seniors who might race only a couple times in the new unis, at the season-ending championship.  Yes, most sports require uniforms - hence the name - but nit-picking high school uniforms for less well-funded programs seems not quite on the mark.)

So yeah, comments on the Interwebs blew up all over the place, but in my opinion focused on the wrong things; instead of snarky Internet comments over half-read articles, folks might want to think about the real affect of regulations that govern what top athletes can or can't do with their bodies in a cosmetic sense (excluding the obvious case of regulated performance-enhancing tactics).  

One thing is for sure: athletes and coaches would do well to learn about, ask about, and require reliable advance rulings on these various rules well before racing starts, so that they don't find out on the dock, or on the starting line - or after the prelims - that they broke the rules and are disqualified.

All of that said, and all point and counterpoint aside, it probably stands to reason that, at the very least, if you make the Olympic team - or the Paralympic team - you should be able to get an Olympic tattoo, end stop.

Anyway, a Snopes article showed up almost instantly, and a lot of folks linked to it (some apparently without reading it), so here it is for your convenience: http://www.snopes.com/olympic-rings-tattoo-ban/.