Olympic Athletes Flying The Flag......Upside Down

[Spacecadet]

These two are wearing their Union flags the right way up, although you may not be able to see them in this close-up

Neither of those girls are British

[SimonMac]

Is this right?

[EternalOptimist]

Neither of those girls are British

who cares

[Gentile]

Is this right?

Not only is it upside down, but I believe that flying it with the Shahada inscription that way up can cause you to get your head removed from your body. Also, it's one of the only flags that has a different front to its back, again because they don't want the inscription (which reads "There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God") to ever be written back-to-front.

[Gentile]

who cares

The French. It's their kiss.

[d000hg]

It's a small point, but I can't help noticing that there are more than a few British athletes at the Olympics that don't know which way up the Union Flag should go.

Lets see you think rationally when trying to deal with a large, unwieldy flag when physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted, there are 80,000 people screaming at you, and a horde of photographers in your face.

[MarillionFan]

Lets see you think rationally when trying to deal with a large, unwieldy flag when physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted, there are 80,000 people screaming at you, and a horde of photographers in your face.

You do if you invented MMA, .Net & the Internet.

[Gentile]

Lets see you think rationally when trying to deal with a large, unwieldy flag when physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted, there are 80,000 people screaming at you, and a horde of photographers in your face.

Actually, Bradley Wiggins (who is the person that is most definitely is flying the flag upside down and not just the 'right way up but facing backwards') was wearing his medal in the photo posted earlier, so it must have been well after the event. I'm not sure therefore how you can claim exhaustion as the cause in that case.

Still, here's another photo of Wiggo making the exact same mistake, that seems to have been taken nearer to the end of a race:

So I guess he can use that excuse that time.

[psychocandy]

It's to do with whether the Irish or Scots crosses should go on top, isn't it? The original Union Flag didn't have an Irish Cross of St Patrick, it just looked like this:

And then when the Irish CoSP was to be added, by convention it should have gone behind all the other existing symbols, but if it had it would have been completely obscured by the existing, thicker St Andrew's cross. So instead they made half of each quadrant have the St Andrew's cross on top, and the other half the Cross of St Patrick was on top (but you could still see some of the St Andrew's cross behind it), making for a pretty odd design.

Nobody ever seems to notice or mind that there's no Welsh element to the design, though.

Yep. I do mind theres no Welsh element!!!!

[Gentile]

Yep. I do mind theres no Welsh element!!!!

They should put a big bloody leek or a dragon on the thing. That way there'd be half a chance of Wiggo et al getting it the right way up!