While more than a hundred medals – manufactured by the Paris Mint – have already been returned by the athletes rewarded at the Paris 2024 Games, the IOC ensures that all damaged charms will be replaced.
The “defective medals” from the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, manufactured by the Paris Mint, “will be systematically replaced”, the International Olympic Committee told AFP on Monday, while the website La Lettre reported “more than 100 ” medals concerned.
“The Paris 2024 Olympic Organizing Committee is working closely with Monnaie de Paris, the institution responsible for the manufacturing and quality control of the medals, to evaluate any complaints about the medals and to understand the circumstances and the cause of the damage”, indicates the IOC. “Defective medals will be systematically replaced by the Paris Mint and engraved identically.” “The replacement process should begin in the coming weeks,” specifies the IOC.
“Damaged”, or “defective”?
Contacted by AFP, a spokesperson for the Monnaie de Paris refutes the term “defective” and indicates that medals reported as “damaged” by athletes since August have already been replaced.
“We have replaced all the damaged medals since August and we will continue as we have already done in a professional manner,” he declared, specifying that replacements were “in progress” and followed requests which arrive “on the water”.
-According to the online media La Lettre, “more than 100 defective medals were returned by dissatisfied athletes”, who saw their rewards degrade. Several athletes shared photos of their medals on social networks. The American Nyjah Huston, who finished third in the street skateboarding events on July 29, for example, complained a few days later about the poor quality, according to him, of his bronze medal, which was “starting to flake a little” and “seems to have gone to war.”
The medals “paid the price for the new products used”, while a new regulation banned a component of the varnish previously used and “it had to be replaced at short notice”, says La Lettre.
Designed by Chaumet (LVMH group), the manufacture of the 5,084 gold, silver and bronze medals was entrusted to the public establishment of the Paris Mint. Each of them contains a small piece of the Eiffel Tower, coming from the stocks of the company operating the Parisian monument. Each medal is 85 mm in diameter, 9.2 mm thick, with different weights, 529 g for gold, 525 g for silver and 455 g for bronze.
