Variations on the theme of the Union Flag have been a trend for over a decade in the Team GB Olympic kit – despite the recent outrage about some merchandise for Paris 2024.

The British Olympic Association (BOA) were forced to quash rumours that the kit for this summer’s Paris Games, due to be unveiled officially in two weeks’ time, would feature an interpretive version of the natiional flag.

Merchandise such as a patterned Team GB supporters’ flag – which has been for sale on their website for nearly a year – was splashed on the front page of The Sun on Tuesday with the phrase “Union Joke”.

Coming in the wake of a scarcely believable storm over the St George’s Cross on the back of England’s football shirt, this fresh Olympics “controversy” had ex-goalkeeper Peter Shilton crying “nothing is sacred”, and two-time Olympic medallist Fatima Whitbread claiming she was “absolutely disgusted”.

However, the BOA made clear that “all Team GB athletes will wear the Union Jack as normal in Paris”.

The merchandise in question was a collaboration with the agency Thisaway, who explained: “We needed to find a way of refreshing Team GB’s colour palette in a way that is both flexible and ownable.

“Rather than trying to look beyond the traditional colours, we decided to embrace them and push the iconic red, white and blue as far as we could.

“The result is a vibrant and varied colour palette that has the versatility to be restrained and traditional in one breath, and bold and contemporary in the next.

“The core palette is also complimented by the three other colours that go hand-in-hand with the Olympic Games; gold, silver and bronze.”

This is not be the first time designers have used the colours of the flag as inspiration rather than immutable constraints for kit design.

In 2012, when London hosted one of the most patriotic events of the 21st century, Team GB’s creative director Stella McCartney produced a design for the athletes to wear that featured a reconstructed Union Flag in shades of blue, from navy to light, with less white, and red only on some of the trim, and on socks and footwear.

“I wanted the kit to be British, but understated, not ridiculous,” McCartney said.

Many versions of the 2012 kit – which had to be custom-designed to fit each sport – featured texturing of the flag too, with darker blue dots accenting some of the lighter stripes.

“It should have a swoosh rather than stripes,” was hurdler Andy Turner’s verdict at the time. Heptathlete Kelly Sotherton said she thought “changing up the Union Jack is a novel and stylish idea”.

Cyclist Bradley Wiggins simply went with “oh dear, the Olympic kit!!!”

So there was kit-split opinion – albeit on the grounds of taste rather than patriotism – even then. But the design was clearly successful enough for Adidas to re-employ McCartney, one the UK’s most successful fashion designers, for the Rio 2016 Games.

In an unprecedented move, McCartney helped create an entirely new coat of arms with the College of Arms. The kits featured silhouettes of two lions, one in dark blue and the other in red, the floral emblems of each of the four nations represented by Team GB, and a brand new motto: iuncti in uno, which translates from the Latin as “joined together as one”.

The College of Arms described it as “an unusual and very successful example of close collaboration between old and new media”.

The majority of the kits featured a Union Jack only as a faded background to the main illustrations, as well as a small flag on the sleeve.

McCartney was not retained for Adidas’s Tokyo 2020 project – an Olympics that took place a year late because of the pandemic – but again the Union Flag was used as a basis for the kit.

The red, white and blue stripes thick and thin were displaced and divided, broken down into geometric shapes “to bring a rich depth of uniqueness and modern relevancy to celebrating national pride”.

On that occasion, the kit barely made it into the inside back pages of the newspapers.

Now, in the wake of the England football team’s brush with the culture war, Team GB now finds itself at the heart of a multicoloured storm too.