Pins are the unofficial economy of the Olympic Games. Exchanged among fans, volunteers and competitors as a form of social currency, pin trading offers access to the global Olympic conversation without even needing a ticket to an event.
It’s how I met Brent Folan.
Four days into the Games, I was already running on fumes and Olympic adrenaline. On my third event and somewhere around my 20th working hour of the day, meeting Folan, the 35-year-old guy walking the streets of Cortina in a half-unzipped American flag onesie, felt like something out of a dream. One of those really weird ones where you have clouds for shoes and Snoop Dogg starts singing you a ballad.
And when he approached me asking if I had any pins to trade, my brain fog lifted into something more like a psychedelic haze as his panel of pins from people and places across the world gleamed in the light of the luge track at the Cortina Sliding Center.
I groggily passed him a Park City pin with an image of Jupiter Peak on it, highlighting the 2034 Games. He offered any from his selection, including one of 300 limited edition custom pins of his own featuring a cartoon version of himself in that outrageously American onesie, throwing up his hands in the air.
I accepted. My new Brent Folan original now sits at the top of my lanyard, just above the Canadian ski team pin I acquired at the Olympic downhill earlier in the week — my two prized possessions.
While for me, Folan and his onesie were something of a shocking and hilarious spectacle of national pride and Olympic participation, for him, the onesie is a superpower.
He said it signals instantly who he is and where he is from, and it brings in people who want to take part in the Olympic conversation.
“The crazier you dress, the better it is,” Folan said. “It attracts people. It helps with pin trading. It just makes it more fun for everyone.”
The Olympics have given Folan more than an impressive pin collection. They changed the trajectory of his life.
Folan was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and spent much of his adult life in Texas after attending Texas Christian University. A massive sports fan, Folan said he spent three years preparing to attend the 2016 Rio Games after the 2012 Summer Olympics inspired him to go and volunteer.
The first day of the 2016 Games, he landed a selfie with Warren Buffett at the Opening Ceremony. By day four, he was dubbed the “Forrest Gump of the Rio Olympics” in The Wall Street Journal. A week later, he had met and taken a photograph with Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Usain Bolt, and appeared on “Good Morning America” as “the Selfie King of Rio.”
He skipped his return flight and stayed through the closing ceremony, attending 33 events. That trip launched a 412-day journey across 57 countries. He met his now wife, Caity George, in Kenya. The couple eventually traveled to 116 countries and all seven continents over eight years.
Today they live in Puerto Rico, balancing their work in wildlife photography, scuba diving and advocacy. And yes, they stayed up all night to watch Bad Bunny perform at the Super Bowl.
The couple is attending the Games alongside his brother, Evan, and Evan’s girlfriend. Evan’s recovery from a severe traumatic brain injury inspired their family’s advocacy work through Toro and Tides, an organization they launched to raise awareness and build community for people living with traumatic brain injuries.
Every Olympic cycle, Folan returns to the onesie. Now attending his first Winter Games, he wears a fleece version.
“It really feels like I’m in a dream. The Olympic magic is so real. And you know how it is, right? Everybody here, it’s just, it’s unexplainable,” said Folan.
Of the three Games Folan has attended — Rio, Paris and now Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo — he said the Olympics in Italy stand out.
“It’s the fact that they closed the city. Only locals can drive there. It was the best for pin trading, the best for running into athletes who had their medals in their pockets that were willing to show you. I did not want to leave Cortina. It’s magic there,” said Folan.
Folan works to make the Olympic experience his own.
As a lifelong global citizen and professional traveler, he’s the guy in the American flag onesie who hitchhikes into town because the bus takes too long.
“I don’t want to waste 10 minutes waiting for a bus. There are people to meet,” he said.
He wasn’t waiting on the street for more than a minute before a driver came for him. The first time, he met a Frenchman attending his 13th Olympics, the next man he met was on his eighth.
Pin trading has been constant, he said. He arrived in Rio with about 100 pins. In Paris, he traded more than 300. This year, he commissioned 300 custom pins of his own and has already traded most of them.
“I finally made my own custom pin,” he said. “Now I’m in the big leagues.”
Folan logs each day on his social media account and has amassed a massive following over the years. But he said that for the first time in all his years of Olympic virality, athletes and fans have approached him to trade.
In the few days he was in Cortina, he was learning the life story of a retired Austrian slider, coordinating a future pin trade with an athlete from Eritrea and trading stories of his adventures in athletes’ home countries.
After traveling to hundreds of cities, the pins he acquires each Games have come to represent a connection to people all around the world. Folan said he remembers every person he trades a pin with, and his travels continue to bridge distances, superseding teams, countries and politics to build a better picture of what humanity looks like.
His supply of pins was dwindling, with just around 80 left to trade as of Friday and nine days left of the Games — dreadful news for friends and family back home who asked Folan to save them some.
It is, however, fantastic news for this lucky reporter who found him before he realized he would need to start being selective with his trades.
“What I love about the Olympics now is it feels like a big reunion,” he said. “I used to say I’ll never miss another Summer Olympics,” he said. “Now, after this first Winter Olympics, I don’t think I’ll ever miss another Olympics in my life.”
When the Winter Games arrive in Utah in 2034, Folan said he plans to be there. Though with eight years to wait, he hopes he might be there with kids of his own.
Folan promises his “family full of onesies” will bring the energy to Utah, and maybe they’ll even take part in the competition. Having met so many of the world’s greatest athletes, he said, put the dream of being an Olympian within reach.
“It’s inspiring, but you can see how they all did it, and well, if my kids want to do that, I will provide every opportunity to help them achieve that dream,” he said.
But if they do ever compete, Folan joked the debate in his house will be whether they represent Team USA or Team Australia, on behalf of his wife’s lineage.
For Folan, the Olympics didn’t just shrink the world geographically. They shrank the distance between dreams and reality, making the impossible feel within reach.
“For me, at my first Olympics, it was so cool to see all these countries come together, and then it created this opportunity to go to those countries and see their culture and experience it. And now these names on a map are associated with friends and places I’ve been,” he said. “It’s a hundred magic moments that I’ll never forget.”