Winter Olympics investigating as athlete 'immediately' breaks gold medal

While some athletes may have been left disappointed with getting no medal at all, others have dealt with the blow that their coveted awards are broken.

A number of medallists at this year’s Winter games have reported problems, with one American star pretty much ‘immediately’ breaking theirs.

Women’s downhill champion Breezy Johnson was celebrating her gold medal win yesterday (8 February) when it was ripped from its ribbon.

And now the Winter Olympic Games bosses are investigating.

Johnson’s momentous first Olympic gold medal came after her teammate, Lindsey Vonn, suffered a serious crash out on the slope.

The 30-year-old had a great run of 1:36:10 and was so buzzing with her win she was ‘jumping up and down in excitement’. But she said this meant the ‘heavy’ medal ‘just fell off’.

“So there’s the medal and there’s the ribbon, and here’s the little piece that is supposed to go in the ribbon, to hold it in the medal,” Johnson showed reporters following the win. “And yeah, it came apart. I'm sure somebody will fix it. It's not crazy broken, but it’s a little broken.”

Team USA joked that her Olympic gold medal ‘did not pass the jump test’.

Similarly, a video shared by Germany’s DSV Biathlon on Instagram saw athlete Justus Strelow dancing along with his teammates when he realised his bronze medal had fallen off the ribbon and hit the floor.

“Are they not meant to be celebrated?” the team wrote, as the Olympian can be seen trying to piece it back together.

And it was the same case for US figure skater Alysa Liu after the team picked up the event gold medal yesterday.

She took to Instagram earlier today to say: “My medal don’t need the ribbon,” as she held up the separate parts.

The chief games operations officer for the Milan Cortina organising committee, Andrea Francisi, says a solution is being worked on as these broken medals quickly go viral.

"We are aware of the situation; we have seen the images. Obviously, we are trying to understand in detail if there is a problem," he said today.

"But obviously we are paying maximum attention to this matter, as the medal is the dream of the athletes, so we want that obviously in the moment they are given it that everything is absolutely perfect, because we really consider it to be the most important moment. So we are working on it."