{"id":366365,"date":"2024-02-08T21:34:10","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T22:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=366365"},"modified":"2024-02-09T00:02:51","modified_gmt":"2024-02-09T00:02:51","slug":"incredible-tiny-detail-revealed-in-paris-medals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=366365","title":{"rendered":"Incredible tiny detail revealed in Paris medals"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Olympic<\/a> medal inlaid with a piece of the Eiffel Tower. How\u2019s that for a monumental prize?<\/p>\n

A hexagonal, polished chunk of iron taken from the iconic landmark is being embedded in each gold, silver and bronze medal that will be hung around athletes\u2019 necks at the July 26 to August 11 Olympics, and Paralympics<\/a> that follow.<\/p>\n

Games organisers revealed their revolutionary design on Friday (AEDT).<\/p>\n

\ufeffREAD MORE:<\/strong> 'Insane' age gap created by teen's Opals call-up<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

EXCLUSIVE:<\/strong> 'Proudest moment' led Gagai to end All Stars boycott<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\ufeffREAD MORE:<\/strong> Roosters rocked as star's code switch confirmed<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Simone Biles has seven medals from her two previous Olympics and LeBron James has two golds and one bronze from London, Beijing and Athens. But neither of those athletes who are targeting the Paris Games nor any of the roughly 36,600 other medallists at 29 previous Summer Olympics stretching back to 1896 ever owned one quite like these.<\/p>\n

By making history at the Games, Paris medallists will take a bit of France and its history home, too.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a deep dive into the medals that are sure to wow:<\/p>\n

ARE THESE REALLY EIFFEL TOWER CHUNKS?<\/h2>\n

Absolutely. The 330-metre-tall tower is made of 18,038 iron parts. But it\u2019s also getting a bit long in the tooth. Built for the 1889 World\u2019s Fair \u2014 which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution \u2014 engineer Gustave Eiffel\u2019s tower was only intended to stand for 20 years.<\/p>\n

Instead, it just goes on and on \u2014 thanks to a bit of rejuvenating surgery from time to time and constant care. The 135-year-old tower is a veteran of two previous Games \u2014 in 1900 and 1924, the last held in Paris.<\/p>\n

The iron pieces embedded in the centre of the Olympic medals each weigh 18 grams.<\/p>\n

They were cut from girders and other bits that were swapped out of the Eiffel Tower during renovations and stored for safekeeping, according to Joachim Roncin, head of design at the Paris Games organising committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe concept came after a few discussions. We realised that there\u2019s one symbol known across the world, which is the Eiffel Tower,\u201d Roncin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said to ourselves, \u2018Hey, what if we approached the Eiffel Tower Operating Co. to see if it\u2019s possible to get a bit of the Eiffel Tower to integrate into the medal?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The company agreed, and \u201cthe dream became reality", he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a bit of metal from the Eiffel Tower.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/Olympics\/status\/1755577759827415492<\/a><\/p>\n

HOW WERE THE CHUNKS PREPARED?<\/h2>\n

They were stripped of paint, polished and varnished for their second life.<\/p>\n

They are stamped with \u201cParis 2024\u201d and the Games logo \u2014 which looks like a flame or the face of a woman with a chic bob haircut. The five Olympic rings are also stamped on the iron of the Olympic medals. The Paralympic logo of three swooshes, known as the Agitos, is stamped on the medals for the August 28 to September 8 Paralympics.<\/p>\n

The iron pieces\u2019 hexagonal form represents France. The French sometimes refer to their country as \u201cL\u2019Hexagone\u201d \u2014 the hexagon \u2014 because of its shape.<\/p>\n

Paris jewelry house Chaumet designed the medals. Six small clasps that hold the iron pieces in the medals are a wink at the 2.5 million rivets that bind the Eiffel Tower together.<\/p>\n

Around the iron pieces are disks of gold, silver or bronze. They\u2019re crinkled to reflect the light, making the medals shine. Games organisers say the metal is all recycled, not newly mined.<\/p>\n

ARE PARIS\u2019 MEDALS UNIQUE?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Yes. Olympic medals have tended to be quite sober. In what was a first, medals for the 2008 Beijing Olympics contained inlaid jade disks. But Paris is the only host city to include chunks of a famous monument.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a gold medal is already something incredible. But we wanted to add this French touch and we thought that the Eiffel Tower would be this cherry on the top,\u201d Roncin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a piece of it is a piece of history.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ancient Greek goddess of victory, Nike, features on the Olympic medals\u2019 other side \u2014 as she has done at every Games since 1928. But Paris has also added a small representation of the Eiffel Tower on that side, in another break with tradition.<\/p>\n

The other side of the Paralympic medals shows a view of the tower as if looking upward from underneath. For visually impaired people, \u201cParis 2024\u201d is written in Braille and the edges have notches: one for gold, two for silver, three for bronze.<\/p>\n

\"French<\/p>\n

BY THE NUMBERS<\/h2>\n

The Paris Mint is manufacturing 5,084 medals \u2014 about 2,600 for the Olympics and 2,400 for the Paralympics. That is likely more than will be required. Some will be stored in case that medals need to reassigned after the Games, which can happen when medal-winners are subsequently stripped of the prizes for doping. Some go to museums. Any other spares could be destroyed.<\/p>\n

The gold medals weigh 529 grams and are not pure gold. They are made of silver and plated with 6 grams of gold.<\/p>\n

The silvers weigh 525 grams.<\/p>\n

The bronzes weigh 455 grams and are a copper, tin and zinc alloy.<\/p>\n

The medals are 85 millimetres across and 9.2 millimetres thick.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll come in a dark-blue box from Chaumet and a certificate from the Eiffel Tower Operating Co. that the iron pieces came from the monument. Paris organizers didn\u2019t give a monetary value for the medals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Olympic medal inlaid with a piece of the Eiffel Tower. How\u2019s that for a monumental prize? A hexagonal, polished chunk of iron taken from […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":366367,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366365"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=366365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":366371,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366365\/revisions\/366371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/366367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=366365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=366365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=366365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}