Featured Image Credit: X/@ViktorAxelsen
Topics: Olympics, Sport, Social Media
Joe Harker
Now that the Olympics are done and dusted for another few years, the athletes who came away with chunks of metal hanging round their necks have been inspecting their prizes.
However, some people who've won medals at Paris 2024 were less than impressed at the state their awards were in just a few days after winning them.
Team USA skateboarder Nyjah Huston posted his bronze medal and how it was already looking quite different to the way it did when he first got it.
Advert
Olympic organisers have said they'll replace any 'damaged' medals, while others pointed out that the metal in the medals will change appearance as it begins to oxidise.
Still more said that the bronze would have a coating to protect the metal from changing too much, and that Huston's should probably be looking better than it did.
Did you know that the gold, silver and bronze medals at the Olympics are made of much more than just those metals?
Both the gold and silver medals are made of more than 92.5 percent silver, while the bronze medal is mostly copper.
Advert
The Paris 2024 medals also feature bits of scrap metal recovered from the Eiffel Tower over the years of renovation and refurbishment.
Meanwhile, the ones from Tokyo had bits of recycled electronic devices which people had donated.
Another athlete, Danish badminton player Viktor Axelsen who won gold in both Paris and Toyko, has been comparing his medals to see how the latest bunch stand up to the crop from the last Olympics.
Polishing your medals and keeping grubby, sweaty hands away from them is a good way to protect the metal, but lots of people were commenting that the medals from Toyko looked much nicer than those from Paris.
"Paris looks like a chocolate wrapper," one person said, while another criticised the Paris 2024 medal for looking 'bargain bin'.
Advert
In defence of the Parisian medal it still looks gold, shiny and a suitably impressive accolade for the pinnacle of athletic competition.
The badminton player seemed to be pretty happy with winning multiple medals, and why wouldn't he be?
Others were impressed that Axelsen could afford to be 'showing off' the fact he'd won a gold medal in two successive Olympics, calling it a 'flex'.
In truth there are only a handful of people on the planet who could carry out such an experiment for our benefit, if you've got several Olympic gold medals then you might as well flaunt them.