Two swimmers have become the latest athletes who took part in last summer’s Olympics to complain about the state of their bronze medals.
France’s Clement Secchi and Yohann Ndoye-Brouard both revealed the condition of the medals on social media, almost five months after they finished third in the 4×100 metre medley relay.
The issue first emerged before the Games had even finished after skateboarder Nyjah Huston shared images showing his medal had already appeared to tarnish.
United States team-mates Nick Itkin and Ilona Maher followed suit days later by revealing the state of the medals they respectively won in fencing and rugby sevens.
Months later, Secchi posted a picture of his bronze medal along with the caption, “Crocodile skin”, prompting a response from Ndoye-Brouard suggesting his own medal now looked more like one from the “Paris 1924” Games.
The images heaped further embarrassment on Paris 2024, which had promised last summer that any damaged medals would be replaced.
Huston had been the first to raise the alarm, revealing that his own had begun to deteriorate after just 10 days.
“All right, so these Olympic medals look great when they’re brand new, 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’re apparently not as high quality as you would think,” he said.
“I mean, look at that thing. It’s looking rough. Even the front. It’s starting to chip off a little. So yeah, I don’t know, Olympic medals, you maybe got to step up the quality a little bit.”
Britain’s first medallist of the Games, diver Yasmin Harper, also showed that her medal had signs of wear and tear within a week of winning bronze with partner Scarlett Mew Jensen in the women’s 3m synchronised springboard diving.
“There’s been some small bits of tarnishing,” said Harper. “I think it’s water or anything that gets under metal, it’s making it go a little bit discoloured, but I’m not sure.”
The medals for Paris 2024 were designed by French luxury jeweller Chaumet and were set with a piece of iron taken from the Eiffel Tower during renovation in the 20th century.
It has become a feature of every Olympics that some medals deteriorate more quickly than others amid a variation in the exact make-up of them at each Games.
Gold medals are usually made of silver with a gold coating, with bronze ordinarily a mix of copper, zinc and tin.
How quickly bronze degrades depends on the exact mix and a high proportion of cheaper metals is known to quicken the process.
