Triple Olympic Gold medalist Franjo von Allmen of Crew Switzerland poses for a photograph together with his medals on the staff resort on Feb. 12 in Bormio, Italy.
Christian Petersen/Getty Photographs Europe
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Christian Petersen/Getty Photographs Europe
The Olympic medal is likely one of the most coveted awards that an athlete can obtain. However at this yr’s Winter Video games in Milan, medalists are celebrating cautiously.
“I used to be leaping in pleasure and it broke,” American skier Breezy Johnson stated after incomes her gold medal on Sunday. She warned different medalists “Do not leap in them.”
Johnson is one among a number of athletes who reported their medals detaching from their ribbon and in a single case, breaking in half.
American skier Breezy Johnson holds up her gold medal on the rostrum of the ladies’s downhill occasion in the course of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Video games on the Tofane Alpine Snowboarding Centre in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Feb. 8.
Stefano Rellandini/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
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Stefano Rellandini/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
At a press briefing on Tuesday, Olympic organizing committee spokesperson Luca Casassa stated he was conscious that there have been points with some medals. He added {that a} resolution has been recognized and inspired athletes with defective medals to return them for restore.
“As a precaution, we’re re-checking all of the medals to be sure that the athletes’ pleasure could be actually 360 levels after they conquer one thing which is so treasured and so necessary,” Casassa stated in Italian.
He did not specify what the difficulty or the repair was.
This is not the primary time that Olympic medals wanted to get replaced. After the 2024 Summer season Olympics in Paris, athletes raised issues that their awards, which famously included items of the Eiffel Tower, had been tarnishing and corroding after the video games.
Athletes report defective medals, however proceed to have fun their achievements
The precise second when German biathlete Justus Strelow’s medal got here unfastened was caught on digicam. In a video that has since gone viral, Strelow’s teammates are seen clapping when a clang could be heard. The digicam pans to Strelow, who picks up his medal and tries to re-attach it to his ribbon — resulting in an ungainly halt in celebrations.
In a video posted on Instagram, Alysa Liu, a determine skater with Crew USA, confirmed off her ribbon-less medal, alongside the phrases, “My medal do not want the ribbon.”
Whereas a lot of the medal snafus had been restricted to strap points, Swedish cross-country skier Ebba Andersson informed Swedish broadcaster SVT that her silver broke in two when it fell within the snow.
Silver medalist Ebba Andersson of Crew Sweden celebrates on the rostrum in the course of the Medal Ceremony for the Girls’s 10km + 10km Skiathlon on day one of many Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic video games at Tesero Cross-Nation Snowboarding Stadium on Feb. 7 in Val di Fiemme, Italy.
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Maddie Meyer/Getty Photographs Europe
Johnson, the American skier, stated a small rectangular piece — that was supposed to carry the medal and ribbon collectively — got here aside, making her medal unwearable.
“I am positive someone will repair it. It is not loopy damaged however just a little damaged,” she stated on Sunday.
A number of days later, Johnson informed Reuters that she acquired a alternative medal, however she would like to have her authentic again, noting that her new medal was not but engraved.
“They could not repair it so that they gave me a brand new one,” she stated. “Though I am truly curious, as a result of then I believe a few of the later ones they had been capable of repair. So now I am sort of questioning if perhaps I can get the outdated one again fastened.”
Design flaw or manufacturing glitch?
This yr’s medals resemble two halves coming collectively. In a video, Raffaella Paniè, who serves because the Model, Id and Look Director at this yr’s Winter Video games, stated it was meant to represent how every victory is the results of the athlete, in addition to their staff of household, coaches and trainers.
Reuters reported that the medals featured a security clip, supposed to snap off when pulled forcefully to forestall the ribbon from strangling. The Milano-Cortina press staff didn’t reply to an electronic mail request for remark concerning the medals’ clip operate.
“It sounds prefer it’s not the entire metals, it is simply a few of them, which leads me to consider that — simply speculating — there’s some form of manufacturing glitch,” stated Doug McIndoe, editor of The MCA Advisory, {a magazine} from the Medal Collectors of America.
In response to McIndoe, when solid metals are poured into mould and harden, it will probably trigger the steel to shrink.
“It is potential that the opening the place that clip goes in is perhaps barely too large, just some millimeters or lower than that, and it is simply not securing that clip in correctly,” he stated.
He added that it is an age-old query of learn how to make medals wearable, explaining that drilling a gap or incorporating one into the design of a mould to string a ribbon by means of had been traditionally unpopular strategies. It wasn’t till the Nineteen Sixties that Olympic medals started to be worn round athletes’ necks.
“Again from Roman instances, they had been, they had been simply one thing you maintain in your fingers and revel in and plenty of them had been issued in containers,” McIndoe added.
Even with the design hiccups, this yr’s gold and silver medals are value probably the most they have been in a century. That is as a result of the worth of those treasured metals have soared over the previous yr. A number of components are contributing to document costs, however a primary driver is President Trump’s tariffs, which is inflicting financial uncertainty in markets all over the world, in line with treasured metals skilled Peter Krauth.
Though every gold medal comprises solely 500 grams of precise gold (the remainder is manufactured from silver) Krauth estimates that their present value stands at round $2,300 — twice their worth in the course of the Summer season Olympics in July 2024. A silver medal is at present value round $1,400 — practically 3 times its worth two years in the past, he stated.
Krauth believes the worth of gold and silver will proceed to stay excessive for years to come back, even as much as the 2028 Summer season Olympics. However he famous that the actual value of Olympic medals comes from the athletic achievement behind it.
“The sentimental worth of a medal is value far more than the steel within the medal,” he stated.
