Athletes who win medals on the 2024 Summer season Olympics and Paralympics in Paris gained’t simply win gold, silver or bronze. Their medals will even embody a bit of iron — wrought-iron, to be actual, from the Eiffel Tower itself.
Organizers of the Video games mentioned Thursday that every of the 5,084 medals created for the Paris occasions might be embellished on one facet with a hexagon-shaped piece of iron recovered from the French capital’s iconic landmark.
“This distinctive object needed to meet one other very robust image of our nation and our capital,” Tony Estanguet, the president of the Paris 2024 organizing committee, mentioned at an occasion to unveil the medals’ design in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris the place a number of Olympic occasions might be held.
Mr. Estanguet mentioned the iron used within the medals might be recycled fragments from the Eiffel Tower’s authentic 1889 building that had been sitting unused in a warehouse after renovation work.
Stripped of their brown paint and polished, every fragment will weigh 18 grams, or simply over half an oz, and be normal right into a hexagon — the form of France.
The hexagons, stamped with “Paris 2024” and the brand of the Video games, might be set into the medal with claws formed just like the Eiffel Tower’s rivets, utilizing a method just like that employed to affix treasured gems in jewellery. Ridges of radiating strains which are designed to replicate gentle, a nod to Paris’ nickname because the Metropolis of Mild, encompass the hexagons.
“We needed this medal to be lovely, we needed it to be symbolic, and what’s extra symbolic than bringing again house a bit of France’s heritage,” Martin Fourcade, a five-time Olympic champion who is also president of the Paris 2024 Athletes’ Fee, mentioned on the presentation.
“It makes me proud to be French,” added Béatrice Hess, a French former swimmer with 20 Paralympic titles. “It’s a jewel.”
The designs on the opposite facet of the Olympic medals — that are made from recycled metallic and should observe exact specs imposed by the Worldwide Olympic Committee — will fluctuate. They’ll embody conventional symbols of the Video games, together with of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, in addition to the Athens Acropolis — together with an engraving of the Eiffel Tower.
The medals for the Paralympic Video games might be totally different, with a low-angle view from beneath the Eiffel Tower, and the phrases “Paris” and “2024” written in Braille — the written system for visually impaired individuals that’s named after the Frenchman Louis Braille. These medals will even have notches on the sides: one for gold, two for silver, and three for bronze.
Olympic organizers have lengthy had the choice of nodding to their nations’ tradition of their medal designs; on the Beijing 2008 Video games, medals had been inlaid with a jade disk. Nonetheless, the announcement from the organizers of the Paris Video games gave the impression to be the primary time a metropolis has used fragments of an precise monument.
The medals are being manufactured by the Monnaie de Paris — the official Paris Mint — and had been designed by Chaumet, a 244-year-old Paris jewellery firm owned by LVMH, the French luxurious conglomerate belonging to Bernard Arnault. LVMH is without doubt one of the Video games’ largest sponsors, offering greater than $150 million in funding.
Antoine Arnault, one in all Mr. Arnault’s youngsters and the top of communications and picture for LVMH, mentioned on the presentation on Thursday that “it was an actual problem to work with a bit of the Iron Woman.”
“This isn’t only a medal that we’re presenting at this time,” he added. “It’s a murals.”
The Eiffel Tower is probably France’s most widely known monument, with about 7 million guests per yr. A number of occasions on the Paris Video games might be held in a brief stadium arrange on the Champs de Mars, the park that leads as much as the tower.
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