Brisbane 2032 Leaked Its Olympic Emblem Three Days Early On YouTube

Brisbane 2032 organizers spent a week touring Queensland and handing out their new emblem one fragment at a time, with the finished design saved for a big unveiling in Brisbane on Monday. On Friday evening, the Games’ own YouTube channel showed the whole thing to anyone who happened to be looking, and plenty of people were.

The complete emblem sat in the preview image of an “emblem explainer” video that wasn’t supposed to go live until after the reveal, ABC News first reported. It was up for about 45 minutes before it came down, long enough for screenshots to spread. One that landed on Reddit was later pulled by the site’s legal team, The Guardian reported.

What fans saw was a cockatoo whose crest is drawn as a flame, in a shape that follows the outline of Queensland. The Olympic version is colored after the pink cockatoo, a bird of Australia’s dry interior also known as Major Mitchell’s cockatoo, and the Paralympic version takes the yellow crest of the sulphur-crested cockatoo. “The cockatoo’s crest is a living torch, reminiscent of the iconic Olympic and Paralympic flame,” the leaked video’s description read. “Shaped like Queensland, with its eye on Brisbane, the emblem is a universal symbol to unite Brisbane, Australia and the world in 2032.”

Organizers posted both emblems on their social channels Saturday morning with the line “Consider this your official reveal,” and Tim Mander, the Queensland minister for the Olympics, presented them in full at the Gold Coast stop of the tour, which had already taken the emblem’s pieces to Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton and the Sunshine Coast with Olympians including Ian Thorpe and Anna Meares.

Mander had been asked about the leak on Nine’s Today show a few hours earlier and put it down to fans who had been hunting online for any sign of it. “I’m actually excited it’s finally out,” he said, to which host Alison Piotrowski replied, “That’s one way to spin it.” Brisbane 2032 chief marketing officer Brent Hill was a little more candid with reporters on the Gold Coast. “If we had our time over, maybe there’s different ways we could have done it,” he said, according to AAP, before adding: “The publicity has been incredible.”

Tokyo had a much rougher time with its first emblem for the 2020 Games, which it scrapped on Sept. 1, 2015, after critics said it looked too much like a logo Belgian designer Olivier Debie had made for the Théâtre de Liège. Its designer, Kenjiro Sano, denied copying anything, and Tokyo started over.

Brisbane’s cockatoo will end up on a new 63,000-seat stadium at Victoria Park, which will host athletics along with the opening and closing ceremonies. A joint venture of BESIX Watpac and John Holland was named on Wednesday as the only remaining bidder to build it, with a contract expected early next year and construction to follow, ABC News reported.

The obvious home hope for that track is Ipswich-born Gout Gout, who ran a world U20 record of 19.67 in the 200m at the Australian championships in April and will be 24 when the Games open. He is currently recovering from a hamstring tear that will keep him out of competition until 2027.

Brisbane was awarded the Games in July 2021 and will host the next Summer Olympics after Los Angeles, whose torch relay will visit all 50 states in 2028 and whose tickets are already on sale. Australia’s last Games were in Sydney in 2000, and the country now has a marathon of its own among the World Marathon Majors. The Brisbane Olympics run from July 23 to Aug. 8, 2032, and the Paralympics from Aug. 24 to Sept. 5. Monday’s community event in Brisbane will still go ahead, with an animated version of the emblem and the story behind its design.