Pita Taufatofua, the Oiled Tongan Icon, Is Back for the Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony

Pita Taufatofua made a splash in Rio in 2016 when he entered the Olympics Opening Ceremony shirtless and covered in oil.

Well, he’s back in Tokyo.

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Pita Taufatofua, Tonga’s most well known flag bearer, leads the Tonga delegation during the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics, the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics and the 2016 Rio Olympics respectively.

The Tongan taekwondo practitioner, skier and canoeist marched once again in this year’s Opening Ceremony on Friday as his island nation’s flag-bearer, causing an Internet splash.

Pita Taufatofua, Tonga’s famous shirtless Olympic flag bearer, shares three things you should know about his home country.

Before the ceremony, he’d dropped hints that he’d be back and in rare form, and as he walked through the Olympic Stadium there were literally hundreds of tweets a second about his appearance.

Taufatofua, 37, is due to compete Tuesday in the men’s 80kg round of 16.

An engineer by academic training who lists martial arts legend Bruce Lee as one of his heroes, the 6’3″, 220-pound Taufatofua lives in Australia and also serves as an ambassador for UNICEF.

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Pita Taufatofua, best known for his shirtless stints as Tonga’s Olympic flag bearer, shares three things you should know before taking your shirt off.