For years, Paralympians with tattoos of the Olympic rings were playing a dangerous game: They had to cover the tattoos completely in competition, or face penalties from the International Paralympic Committee, which included disqualification.

But before the 2024 Paralympics, which start this week in Paris, the IPC has suddenly, and without obvious explanation, reversed course, dropping the rule.

"Athletes with such tattoos do not need to cover them up,” Craig Spence, the chief brand and communications officer for the IPC, said in an email Friday.

Spence declined to offer an explanation for the change in policy.

For Paralympians like Rudy Garcia-Tolson, however, the change is a welcome one, regardless of how the IPC came to the decision.

"Paralympic athletes have enough to worry about,” said Garcia-Tolson, 35, a swimmer and five-time Paralympic medalist who had resorted, in recent years, to using a Sharpie to blot out the tattoo of the Olympic rings on his upper back. "Having a logo on our bodies that signifies our journey, our experience as athletes — it’s important to so many of us.”

The Paralympic Games — the largest global sporting event for athletes with disabilities — will run from Wednesday to Sept. 8 in Paris, and will feature more than 4,000 athletes from around the world competing in 22 sports.

For decades, the Olympics and the Paralympics have seemed conjoined. Starting with the Seoul Games in 1988, the Paralympics have been held in the same host city as the Summer Olympics. The Paris Olympics, under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee, ran from July 26 to Aug. 11.

But despite their close ties and associations, the IPC and the IOC are distinct organizations with different staff, different bylaws and — most important — different logos.

Contrary, perhaps, to popular belief, the Paralympics have no formal relationship with the Olympic rings. Instead, the logo for the Paralympics is a swirl of red, blue and green crescents known as the Agitos, which derives from the Latin definition of "I move.”

And this is where Paralympians with tattoos of the Olympic rings ran into problems: The IPC considered them to be a third-party advertisement for an entity (in this case, the Olympics) that was separate from its own. As such, those tattoos had to be covered up.

As an IPC spokesperson explained to NBC Sports in 2016: "Displaying the Olympic rings confuses the public and impacts the understanding about the Paralympic brand, which is different to that of the Olympic one.”

The IPC and the IOC both prohibit advertisements on the bodies of athletes, with some obvious exceptions: logos of apparel brands on swim caps and track singlets, for example.

But for many Paralympians, the Olympic rings are not an advertisement. Far from it, they are viewed as a symbolic representation of their hard work as athletes.

Growing up in Southern California, Garcia-Tolson dreamed of becoming an Olympian, he said. And in his mind, that dream became a reality when, in 2004, as a double amputee, he qualified for his first Paralympics and won his first gold medal in Athens.

With his mother’s permission — he was only 16 at the time, he said — Garcia-Tolson marked the achievement by having the Olympic rings tattooed on his back, below his left shoulder.

"For me, my journey to the Paralympics is those Olympic rings,” he said. "That’s what it signifies — the pursuit of being the best.”

But when the IPC began to crack down on imagery of the Olympic rings in 2012, Garcia-Tolson knew that it was his responsibility to cover up the tattoo for competitions. He may not have agreed with the rule, he said, but he was not about to risk being penalized.

"It was just part of our routine,” he said. "Before an event, it was: ‘All right, I need my cap, I need my goggles, I need my swimsuit and I need a Sharpie.’”

It was never an issue, he said, until he competed at a meet before the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021 and was initially disqualified when the Sharpie ink covering his tattoo washed away during his race. Garcia-Tolson won an appeal and was reinstated.

After competing through 2022, Garcia-Tolson stepped away from competitive athletics to devote more time to his work at the Challenged Athletes Foundation, which aims to provide people with physical disabilities more opportunities to be involved in sports.

He is planning a comeback for the 2028 Paralympics in Los Angeles. Should he qualify, he can leave his Sharpie at home.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times © 2024 The New York Times Company