ICYMI, the gold, silver, and bronze Olympic and Paralympic medals set to debut at the 2024 Paris Olympics were unveiled this week. And in the event that you're already impressed by the ~36,600 medals awarded since the first ceremony back in 1896, this year's iterations somehow manage to take things up a million notches. Why, you ask? Well, for starters, they will each contain a special piece of scrap iron that was once a part of the Eiffel Tower.
“It’s the opportunity for the athletes to bring back a piece of Paris with them...The absolute symbol of Paris and France is the Eiffel Tower,” Thierry Reboul, the *takes deep breath* artistic director for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Paris 2024, told reporters last week, per BBC News.
As you can tell by the pics above ^^, one side of each medal possesses a hexagonal piece of iron from the Eiffel Tower that was removed from the structure during different renovations over the last century. These pieces of metal, which were carefully preserved over the years, were donated to the Paris Olympic committee to create the gorgeous designs that will decorate this year's ceremonial athletes.
“With this unique metal from the Eiffel Tower, this medal has a historic character,” gushed President of the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel Jean-François Martins once the design was revealed to the public.
Incredible historic character aside, the Olympic and Paralympic medals also happen to be s-t-u-n-n-i-n-g, which can likely be attributed to the fact that they were designed by the renowned Chaumet House of Jewellery—a subset of the LVMH group. The collab itself marks an impressive feat since it's the first time in the history of the Olympic and Paralympic Games that a jeweler has designed the medals.
“The Maison Chaumet creative team has conceived each medal as a jewel, taking inspiration from the Parisian craftsmanship of its legendary Place Vendôme workshops and illustrating the vocation shared by all the Houses in our group: the ability to make people dream,” said Antoine Arnault, head of communications and image at LVMH (via Forbes). “We hope that each athlete will enjoy wearing and admiring the medal as much as we enjoyed creating it for them.”
The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games will run from July 26 until August 11 and August 28 through September 8, respectively.
