When France decided on a mascot for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games, it didn’t go with a cartoonish animal, as many other host nations have in years past. Instead, the country chose to honor, of all things, a hat.
The Olympic Phryge (pronounced “fri-jee-uh”), as the mascot is called, is likely to be familiar to any French schoolchild. It’s based on a floppy red cap that became, and remains to this day, an indelible emblem of the late-18th-century French Revolution. (France also debuted the Paralympic Phryge, which has a prosthetic right leg.)
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