About

Tonga Flag Bearer is a nickname given to Tongan Taekwondo champion Pita Taufatofua following his appearance at the 2016 Rio Olympics opening ceremony in early August 2016, where he was seen carrying his country's flag while shirtless and covered in oil. Following his appearance, many internet users joked about his attractive physique and oily torso.

Origin

On August 5th, 2016, Taufatofua led the Tongan delegation as a flag bearer at the Olympics opening ceremony at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he was seen shirtless, covered in oil and wearing a traditional ta'ovala skirt. That day, the NBC Sports YouTube channel uploaded footage of the flag bearer, gaining over 460,000 views and 1,500 comments within 72 hours (shown below).

Spread

That day, Twitter user @GraemeONeil^[2] posted a video clip of Taufatofua along with a joke that his country "now has a shortage of oil" (shown below). Within 72 hours, the tweet gathered upwards of 1,100 likes and 800 retweets.

Shortly after, Twitter user @SlavaMalamud^[5] tweeted "the sound you hear is your wife running away to the Tongan flag bearer," accumulating more than 1,600 likes and 500 retweets in three days. Meanwhile, the @BBCSport^[6] Twitter feed posted a photo of Taufatofua with the caption "Tonga's flag bearer has gone a bit heavy on the oil" (shown below. Within three days, the accumulated more than 1,600 and 3,800 likes respectively. Also on August 5th, a moment feed titled "We need to talk about Tonga's flag-bearer" was created on Twitter.

On August 6th, Redditor Blue-Black submitted several photos of Taufatofua to the /r/Ohlympics^[1] subreddit. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the online reaction to Taufatofua's opening ceremony appearance, including The Daily What,^[3] Yahoo! Sports,^[7] UpRoxx,^[8] The Daily Mail,^[9] BuzzFeed^[10] and The Daily Dot.^[11]

2018 Winter Olympics

At the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics, Pita Taufatofua appeared in similar attire as he had at the Rio 2016 Olympics. Taufatofua will be competing as a cross-country skier for Tonga.^[12]

Commenters remarked that the stunt was more impressive, as it was 28 degrees Farenheit in Pyeongchang during the ceremony. Twitter user @NickMurray91 tweeted a hold my beer joke about Taufatofua, gaining over 460 retweets and 1,300 likes (shown below, left). The Twitter account @olympicchannel tweeted about Taufatofua as well, gaining over 1,000 retweets and 1,800 likes (shown below, right). The moment was covered by Twitter Moments.^[13]

Search Interest

External References