LOVE IT or hate it, Olympic fever has been everywhere this month.

Every four years, thousands of athletes from all around the world come together to compete in different events, hoping to take home the gold for their country.

The 2016 Olympic Games were this time hosted in Rio, where the competing athletes and their entourages resided.

We see these superstars winning medals on TV, but we rarely stop and think about the huge amount of support they require from a great deal of people who travel with them, waiting in the wings so that they are on hand whenever they are needed.

It is very important for athletes to eat right, so it makes perfect sense that each country’s team travels with their own chef, and that it is usually a high-profile chef who is in charge of what they eat.

Travelling with the Italian team this tournament is well-known chef Davide Oldani.

Excited about the challenge at hand, before he started in the role Oldani described his planned menu as “horizontal and ethical cuisine, that bridges Italy to Brazil”.

In celebration of the 2016 Olympic Games, Oldani created a dish called ‘Ciaolà’ – a mash-up of the words ‘ciao’ and ‘olà’, the words for hello in Italian and Portuguese respectively.

The dish featured four bright colours, representing the Olympic torch in the form of four sauces, all made with the best Italian ingredients such as tomatoes, ricotta cheese and even coffee.

As well as bringing in classic ingredients from his home country, Oldani, he would source and work local products too, like fresh fruits, vegetables and seafood.

With the team having their own official supplier of pasta, you can guarantee Oldani will be cooking plenty of different pasta dishes for them, and not just his new ‘Ciolà’ creation.

Inspired by Oldani’s Olympic invention, the recipe I have decided to share with you this week is for Penne Tricolore.

Penne is a popular type of pasta, and tricolore – as you have probably guessed – translates as tricolour.

The three colours I have chosen for my penne are green, white and red - the three colours that make up the Italian flag.

What could be a more perfect way to show support for the team, than cooking a patriotic pasta dish in their honour?

Penne Tricolore is quick and easy to make, and ingredients can be easily substituted to your taste, so long as you get those three colours in there.

If you want to give your dish a really delicious flavour and super stylish appearance, you can buy boxes of tricolour penne, with

green and red penne mixed in with the regular kind that we are all used to. Green penne is flavoured with spinach to give it its colour, whereas red penne is flavoured with tomato. However, the dish is equally as delicious with plain penne, thanks to the sauce it is cooked in.

It is a quick and easy colourful dish that can be made and enjoyed at the table, in the garden on a warm summer’s eve, or in front of the TV while watching the Olympics – well, they do only come around once every four years, after all.