Paris 2024 bronze medals peeling? Athletes report quality issues

Deteriorated, discolored and now unwatchable: what a bad end happened to the medals of the Paris 2024 Olympics: the case is viral

Some of the athletes who won medals at the Paris 2024 Olympics have complained about unforeseen problems with the medals, as they show early signs of deterioration. Complaints flooded social media and focused on the bronze medals that have darkened or started peeling.

The Monnaie de Paris, the body which minted the medals, has since confirmed that a number of them will be replaced, but it hasn’t indicated how many. Various reports put the number of affected medals at more than 100. The problem appears to lie in  , related to limits on the use of chromium trioxide – a highly toxic but very efficient substance that the European Union banned in 2019.

Thus, it is difficult to protect the medals from oxidation. The bronze medals, alloys from copper, zinc, and tin, are more prone to oxidation when in moist or sweaty conditions, which both prevail in most sports.

Eiffel Tower iron centerpiece at the heart of the design

Athletes across all sports have been speaking up as their medals appear to degrade over time. Included among those were American skateboarder Nyjah Huston and British diver Yasmin Harper, who spoke of considerable changes in color and surface texture after a couple of days. The problem does not exclude the Italian athletes either: Among them, Swimmer Ginevra Taddeucci and fencer Gigi Samele were just examples.

The Monnaie de Paris has said that it would finish all the replacement requests by early 2025. It also worked on perfecting the process of coating to ensure this did not happen in the future. The medal-making process itself was already beset with strikes from workers asking for better wages amid the high degree of technical sophistication required for the creation of such medals.

The Paris Olympic medals, designed by the Parisian jewelry house Chaumet, feature an uncommon design: the central hexagon is made from iron from the Eiffel Tower, and radiating lines extend outward. Despite the reported problems, the French mint expressed confidence that the replacement medals will meet the athletes’ expectations.