While many people would – and indeed do – go through a lot to get their hands on an Olympic medal, it seems as though a number of the athletes from Paris 2024 have handed theirs back.
During the games, there was a bit of a kerfuffle over the swift deterioration of some of the medals at Paris 2024, with various athletes posting pictures of the medals looking quite different just a few scant days after they’d been won.
Team USA skateboarder Nyjah Huston showed how his bronze medal already looked rather weathered, posting that it ‘looks like it went to war and back’ and that ‘even the front, it’s starting to chip off a little’, while the games were still going on.
Danish badminton player Viktor Axelsen showed the gold medal he won at Paris 2024 and compared it to the condition of the gold he’d won at Tokyo 2020, with the older medal looking far shinier.
Now, French publication La Lettre reports that over 100 athletes have returned their medals, which were produced by the Monnaie de Paris (Paris Mint) and contained a piece of the Eiffel Tower.
An Olympic gold medal from Paris 2024 a few months on, it doesn’t look great. (Instagram/@clem_secchi)
La Lettre also reports that a trio of people have left the Monnaie de Paris in the wake of the deteriorating medals saga.
They report that one of the reasons for the medals looking as they do is because the toxic chemical chromium trioxide was banned and a new varnish product was used, which had some rather aesthetically unpleasant results.
On the bright side, at least they didn’t give the Olympians medals coated in a toxic varnish, so every cloud and all that.
Olympic officials said they’d replace any ‘damaged’ medals, as time has not been kind to the medals of a number of other athletes who won major accolades in Paris.
A few months on from the games, other athletes shared what their medals looked like now and the accolades earned by French swimmers Clement Secchi and Yohann Ndoye-Brouard don’t look great.
Secchi shared a picture of his gold medal and said it looked like ‘crocodile skin’, while Ndoye-Brouard put up a picture of his bronze medal which appeared to have deteriorated quite a bit.
Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade said the conditions of the medals had made her ‘sad’, as she felt she couldn’t wear them together around her neck since they were getting scratched.
Despite being gold, silver and bronze medals, they are not entirely made of what you’d expect, as while the silver and bronze medals are largely made up of those metals the Olympic gold medal is mainly silver beneath the surface.
The promise from the IOC to replace any defective medals still stands, meaning that the athletes who don’t like how their medals have deteriorated and decided to return them can expect to get newer, better versions of them back further down the line.
LADbible have contacted the IOC and Monnaie de Paris for comment.
