After Maxime Grousset's complaint this summer, it was the French swimmers Clément Secchi and Yohann Ndoye-Brouart, also medalists in the 4x100m medley this summer at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games alongside Florent Manaudou and Léon Marchand, who complained of the degradation of their bronze medal on social networks.
“Crocodile skin.” It is with these few words that Clément Secchi joked about the state of his bronze medal won in the 4x100m medley this summer at the Olympic Games, already seriously damaged only a few months later. What his teammate in the French team Yohann Ndoye Brouard added to by showing photos of his own medal, just as chipped.
“And she’s still in good shape,” replied Ndoye-Brouard to Secchi’s Instagram story, before illustrating his point with a photo of his medal, also degraded, accompanied by the comment “Paris 1924”. Before them, Maxime Grousset, also a member of the bronze medal-winning French 4x100m medley relay, had already mentioned the state of his medal: “Mine is too beautiful. But it's true that it looks like it is smashed, oxidized a little.”
French swimmers are not the first to complain about the quality of the bronzed charm, which had already been talked about in August, the Olympic Games not yet over. The American Nyjah Huston, 3rd in the street skateboarding event, was the first to sound the alarm: “These medals look great when they're brand new. But, after wearing it on myself and having sweated a little or letting my friends wear it over the weekend, it's obviously not as good quality as you might think.”
But no worries for the athletes. “They will change those which have a defect”, affirmed Maxime Grousset. Indeed, Paris 2024 immediately responded: “After reading the testimony on social networks of an athlete whose medal was damaged a few days after its presentation, damaged medals will be systematically replaced by the Paris Mint and engraved with the same.”
