Getting an Olympic medal placed around your neck is one of the greatest things an athlete can achieve … but perhaps the actual medal won’t hold up.
U.S. skateboarder and bronze medalist Nyjah Huston shared a photo of his 2024 Paris Olympics medal on Instagram, and it appears to already be showing some wear and tear.
‘All right, so these Olympic medals look great when they are brand new,’ Huston said in a video. ‘But after letting it sit on my skin with some sweat for a little bit and then letting my friends wear it over the weekend, they are apparently not as high quality as you would think.’
Huston then showed the backside of the medal, the bronze coating appearing to have lost much of its shine.
‘It’s looking rough. Even the front is starting to chip off a little,’ he said. ‘Olympic medals, you gotta maybe step up the quality a little bit.’
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Huston, who won the medal less than two weeks ago when he finished third in the men’s street event, isn’t the only person who has made comments about the bronze medal quality. British diver Yasmin Harper won a bronze medal in the women’s 3-meter synchronized springboard diving event on July 27, and said Friday the quality of her medal isn’t holding up.
‘There’s been some small bits of tarnishing,’ Harper said, according to the BBC. ‘I think it’s water or anything that gets under medal, it’s making it go a little bit discolored, but I’m not sure.’
Every medal for this year’s Summer Games includes a piece of original iron from the Eiffel Tower. The bronze medal is mostly made of copper and with some zinc and iron.
In a statement to the BBC, Paris 2024 organizers said they are aware of the deteriorating medals and plan to work with the company that produced the medals, Monnaie de Paris, to understand why they are damaged so they can be replaced.
‘The medals are the most coveted objects of the Games and the most precious for the athletes,’ a Paris 2024 spokesperson said. ‘Damaged medals will be systematically replaced by the Monnaie de Paris and engraved in an identical way to the originals.”
