Tonga at the 2016 Summer Olympics

Tonga at the 2016 Summer Olympics
IOC code	TGA
NOC	Tonga Sports Association and National Olympic Committee
Website	www.oceaniasport.com/tonga
in Rio de Janeiro
Competitors	7 in 4 sports
Flag bearer (opening)	Pita Taufatofua[1]
Flag bearer (closing)	Siueni Filimone
Medals	Gold 0 Silver 0 Bronze 0 Total 0
Summer Olympics appearances (overview)
1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 2020 2024

Tonga competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. This is the nation's ninth consecutive appearance at the Summer Olympics.

Tonga Sports Association and National Olympic Committee sent the nation's largest delegation to the Games since its official debut at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. A total of seven athletes, four men and three women, were selected to the Tongan team across four different sports; four of them granted universality places to compete in their respective sporting events, with the other three qualifying for the Games on merit through continental tournaments.^[1]

Breaststroke swimmer Amini Fonua was the only Tongan athlete to have represented at the previous Games, with the rest of the field making their Olympic debut in Rio de Janeiro. Tonga's first ever taekwondo fighter and oldest competitor (aged 32) at the Olympics, Pita Taufatofua, who led his delegation as the flag bearer in the opening ceremony, instantly became an internet sensation by millions of viewers, when he marched into the Maracanã Stadium shirtless, smothered in coconut oil, and dressed in a traditional ta'ovala (a Tongan mat).^[2]

Tonga, however, failed to win its first Olympic medal since the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, where boxer Paea Wolfgramm bagged the silver in the men's super heavyweight division.