Winning an Olympic Gold Medal is often the highest prize an athlete can aspire to earn. It is both an individual or collective recognition for being the very best in the world in what you do, as well as a national pride for your country.
However, some Paris medallist are raising concerns about the state of their medals. On Instagram, 4x100m French medallist Clément Secchi posted a story showing the deteriorated state of his medal, with spots he described as "crocodile skin".
His teammate Yohann Ndoye Brouard also showed his on X, saying ironically that it looks like "Paris 1924".
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As spotted by Azernews, other medallists have also shown how fast their medals are degrading. All issues seem to affect only to Bronze medals, which rusts fases when exposed to air and humidity, particularly if the medals are also made in an alloy using other metals.
"These medals look great when they're brand new. But after wearing it and sweating a little or letting my friends wear it over the weekend, it's clearly not as good quality as you might think", said Nyjah Huston, Bronze in street skateboarding.
For every Olympic Games, a different jeweller is hired to make the medals. For Paris, they decided that all medals would carre a little "piece" of the Eiffel Tower (literally). However, it seems the bronze medals were not of the fines quality...