The swimmer Missy Franklin is a 17-year-old sunbeam who daydreams about getting a tattoo, calling it one of her “big motivations” for making the 2012 United States Olympic swimming team in seven events.

Franklin spent months considering where to put the five interlocking Olympic rings that are her sport’s most visible or sometimes not symbol of success, finally deciding on her hip.

Although the iconic Olympic logo is popular body art for athletes from other countries and other sports, it is a particular mark of prestige among American swimmers because of the fierce competition for Olympic berths  only two qualify in most events. Never mind the top 1 percent; the 49 members of the 2012 team represent close to the top one-tenth of a percent of the nation’s registered swimmers.

“It’s like being a member of the Army Special Forces,” said Mike Bruner, who won two gold medals at the 1976 Olympics and was a member of the team that boycotted the 1980 Summer Games.

What better badge of honor to identify membership in such an elite patriotic force? Elizabeth Beisel, who was 16 when she sat for her Olympic body art after competing in the 2008 Beijing Games, said, “It’s the one tattoo that parents will let you get.”



Anthony Ervin, who sports tattoo sleeves on his arms, had the rings tattooed in Australia, shortly after tying for the gold in the 50-meter freestyle in the 2000 Sydney Games.

“It was the first willing stain I made to my body,” said Ervin, who will also compete in the 50-meter freestyle in London.

In Bruner’s heyday, tattoos adorned the biceps of bikers, not backstrokers, butterflyers or breaststrokers. Decades after his retirement, he was inspired to get his Olympic rings  representing the continents of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe by all the swimmers he saw sporting the tattoos at the 2008 trials.


Americans who forgo the rings tattoo these days walk the pool deck feeling practically naked.

“I am in the minority,” conceded Natalie Coughlin, an 11-time Olympic medalist, who is making her third Summer Games appearance but has never visited a tattoo parlor.

“It’s so funny,” she added, “because I love tattoos as works of art, but I can’t commit to one.”

Coughlin, 29, is not shying from the pain of the artist’s needles. She is just shy.

“If you have the Olympic rings anywhere where people can see it, even on your foot, it’s going to draw attention, and I don’t want that,” she said.

The trail of body ink can be traced to the late 1980s. Chris Jacobs, a freestyle sprinter who succeeded despite a prolonged youthful rebellion, is believed to have been the first American swimmer with an Olympic rings tattoo.


--> Jacobs, who won three medals at the 1988 Seoul Games, admired the maple leaf tattoo on the chest of the Canadian breaststroker Victor Davis. On his way home from South Korea, Jacobs stopped in Hawaii to unwind and to get the Olympic rings tattoo near his racing suit line.

It joined the longhorn he had tattooed four years earlier while he attended the University of Texas.

“The tattoo guy told me, ‘You know you have to keep this dry for 10 days because the chlorinated water will totally kill it,’ ” Jacobs said in a telephone interview. “You have to have an amazingly tight alibi to miss one workout, so I came up with this virus with horrible symptoms and that bought me a few days.”

Later, Jacobs added a larger version of the rings on the inside of his right biceps, which caused him stress during his 20 years in the banking industry. Jacobs, now the chief operating officer of Sexiguru, a resortwear company, said he made sure his shirt sleeves covered the tattoo when he was at the office, and he wore workout tops that covered it at the gym.