Medalists at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games will return home with more hardware than they were expecting.
Gold, silver and bronze medals set to be awarded at Paris’ third Games will include an attached steel fragment from the original 1889 construction of the Eiffel Tower. Designed by famous centuries old Paris based jeweler Chaumet, inspiration for the medals came from the Athletes’ Commission of the organizing committee.
But you won’t need to rethink safety during your next trip to the top of the famous tower. Organizers say the steel used for the medals was salvaged from 20th century renovations then preserved in storage for decades. The fragments are shaped as a hexagon, restored to their original color and struck with the Paris 2024 emblem set on the obverse of the medals.
The @Paris2024 #Olympics and #Paralympics medals are revealed and they contain original fragments of the #EiffelTower. History makers will earn pieces of history! What do you think? #Medals #Champions #GoldSilverBronze pic.twitter.com/jKz588jacd
— GamesBids.com (@gamesbids) February 8, 2024
The steel to be adorned around the necks of 2024 champions originally towered over Paris, keeping watch while the French capital hosted the 1900 and 1924 editions of the Games.
The front side of the Olympic medals feature the traditional image of the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, emerging from the Panathenaic Stadium with the Acropolis in the background to commemorate the first modern Games in Athens 1896. The Olympic Rings and Eiffel Tower also appear, tying in the Paris Games.
The Paralympics medals show a low-angle view of the Eiffel Tower with the Paralympic Agitos in the center and the words Paris 2024 in text and braille along the sides. The edge of the medals have raised lines indicating the color: one line for gold, two for silver and three for bronze.
At least 5084 medals will be created for winners of each of the planned events. They have a diameter of 85mm and a thickness of 9.2mm. The gold medal weighs 529 grams (bronze and silver are lighter due to the metallic properties). The heaviest gold medals ever presented were 586 grams at the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Games. For comparison, gold medals at the London 2012 were 412 grams.
This won’t be the first time an historical artifact was promised to be integrated with Olympic medals. At the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, winners of events specifically on February 15 were to be awarded Olympic medals embedded with fragments of the Chelyabinsk meteor, marking the one year anniversary of the crash event that injured thousands and caused damage across the region. The symbolic medals were not ready in time for the podium presentation so a different set of commemorative medals were reportedly shipped to the winning athletes after the Games.
