Entertainment Sports The Tongan Flag Bearer Is Back! A Look Back at Pita Taufatofua at the Olympics Through the Years In an ever-changing world, one thing remains constant: The Tongan Flag Bearer By Andrea Wurzburger Andrea Wurzburger Andrea Wurzburger is a former features writer at PEOPLE. She left PEOPLE in 2022. People Editorial Guidelines Published on July 23, 2021 12:11PM EDT Close 01 of 10 Pita Taufatofua. Tasos Katopodis/UPI/Shutterstock We love the Olympics for so many reasons. As spectators, we wait patiently to see grand feats of athleticism, tales of perseverance and, of course, the shirtless Tongan flag bearer. 02 of 10 Tonga's Pita Taufatofua. Hannah McKay - Pool/Getty Images Pita Taufatofua — who sent the Internet into a frenzy when he carried the Tongan flag shirtless at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio — is back for the Tokyo Olympics and, TBH, thank goodness! 03 of 10 Pita Taufatofua. OLIVIER MORIN/AFP via Getty Taufatofua first went viral for his shirtless, oiled-up look at the 2016 Olympics. (Ah, 2016, a simpler time!) 04 of 10 Ezra Shaw/Getty And while he is certainly a sight to behold, he's not just there to look pretty and carry a flag (though those things are a plus): Taufatofua was actually there to compete. And he wasn't trying to cause an Internet thirst trap, either. He told The Guardian in 2019, "I was representing 1,000 years of history. We didn't have suits and ties when we traversed the Pacific Ocean." 05 of 10 KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images The Olympian's sport of choice for the summer games is Taekwondo. In 2016, he was unfortunately eliminated in his first match by Iranian Sajjad Mardani. 06 of 10 Pita Taufatofua. Dan Istitene/Getty But that wasn't the end of Taufatofua! He returned to the PyeongChang Olympics in 2018, once again shirtless even though it was winter. It's worth nothing that, more impressive than his abs is his degree in engineering from the University of Queensland. 07 of 10 Frank Fife/Getty Images Many were surprised (and delighted) to see the Tongan athlete at the 2018 games. 08 of 10 Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP/REX/Shutterstock. He had only ever seen snow once in his entire life and couldn't even afford his own skis when he decided to compete in cross-country skiing. 09 of 10 AP/REX/Shutterstock. "I chose it because it made no sense," he told The Guardian of his selection in sport. 10 of 10 Getty This year, he's once again competing in Taekwondo, though he had originally hoped to qualify for an entirely different sport: Kayaking! He decided to take up the sport after watching YouTube videos. In the end, it doesn't really matter how he got there! The Olympics are all about perseverance ... and standing out, right? And Taufatofua is a shiny (literally, the guy wears a lot of oil) example of both.