One of the more interesting “color” pieces on the U.S. Olympics coverage on NBC was a piece on how the icons for the different sports were inspired by early Chinese pictograms, which were the precursors of the modern Chinese characters.
You can read a bit more about the design process in this article from the People’s Daily Online.
The use of ancient art for modern Olympic pictograms is not new (see the entries from Athens, Syndney, Lillehammer and Salt Lake City) but I think this was the first time it made it to television.
