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The 23rd Olympic Winter Games: Pyeongchang 2018

image located by Zoltan Horvath, 21 January 2014

Overview
The Flag
Candidate cities
- Annecy

See also:

Overview

The city of PyeongChang (South Korea) has been elected host city of the XXIII Olympic Winter Games in 2018. Fifteen winter sport disciplines, organized as seven Olympic sports, are scheduled in the 2018 Winter Olympics program scheduled to be held between 9 and 25 February 2018. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted on 6 July 2011 at the 123rd IOC Session in Durban, South Africa. Other candidates that applied to host the games were Annecy, France and Munich, Germany. PyeongChang was elected with 63 votes to Munich's 25 votes and Annecy's 7 votes.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Winter_Olympics
Zoltan Horvath, 02 February 2014

The Flag

The emblem's design has its roots in Hangul, with the shapes that form the logo stemming from the first consonants of each syllable in the word "PyeongChang" when it is written in Hangul. The first character in the emblem also represents a gathering place where the three elements of Cheon-ji-in - heaven, earth, and human - are in harmony. The second character symbolises snow and ice, as well as the athletes’ stellar performances. The emblem symbolises a grand gathering of people from all around the world in celebration of Olympic winter sports, which is taking place in the harmonious land of PyeongChang.
Source: http://www.olympic.org/
Zoltan Horvath, 02 February 2014

Candidate cities

Annecy

image located by Zoltan Horvath, 21 January 2014

The ratio of this flag is unusual, the reverse is unusual (or is it the obverse), having advertising on it is unusual. This is not anything like an ordinary Candidate City flag at all. (Well, it's really an Applicant City Flag, but still.) But I like the fact that is says "Ville Requérante", rather than "Applicant City". I wonder whether that's limited to official Olympic languages, or whether cities do that in their local language.
Source: http://www.ebay.com/itm/181303255993.
I've found another image as well, but there it's in the state of "Ville Candidate" ("Candidate City"). By then it also the logo had also developed into a version with different shades for different mountains.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 17 January 2014

Regarding the ebay picture, it seems to be a part of decoration or background rather than a real flag.
Zoltan Horvath, 21 January 2014

It's now a flag, but I guess that's how it started out. I've now found at that even the applicant flag had a logo with multi-shaded mountains. I even know when that logo was introduced: 1 December 2009.
http://www.gamesbids.com/forums/topic/15967-new-logo-coming-soon/page-2. I just can't find it on something that could be a normal flag.
Even the logo before that, which was used for the French candidacy of Annecy, has mountains in different shades of blue. And that one I've at least seen in a sort of street banner in the video.
So, the logo with only one colour for the whole massif is a bit of an exception. As is almost everything on that one.
Hm, at the bottom of http://annecy2018collectors.e-monsite.com/pages/annecy-ville-candidate.html is a two colour version. I'm not sure they mean they were giving them away at winter sports events in France, or were given to those events to be flown there.
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 22 January 2014

The flags were "distributed during different international competitions organized on the French territory, such as the different ski World Cups".
Accordingly, I understand that the flags were offered to the spectators, who were expected to show their massive support to Annecy in front of TV cameras. The visual effect of a crowd waving copies of the same flag is, for sure, more impressive than of a flag hoisted on a single pole.
Ivan Sache, 22 January 2014

Sure, but the Annecy 2018 next to the event flag and organisers flag would give it an undeniable authority.
But the really impressive thing is a flag surfing over the heads and hands of the people, of course. (Do we have a good word for such flags or for displaying a flag in that way?)
A small example can be seen during this behind the scenes video (don't mind the commentators if you let it run until the actual event). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGySy5VaAdo
It not only shows a practice session with people forming their colours into a French flag or an Olympic flag, and with some waving of smaller Annecy 2018 flags comes a larger Annecy 2018 flag to cover the whole group. Plus, all of those flags have the Applicant City logo, proving that that really existed as a normal flag (not just as the curious thing being offered on eBay).
Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 22 January 2014