Designs for New Olympic Medals Feature Iron from the Eiffel Tower — See Photo!
"We wanted these medals to be truly unique, to bear the Paris 2024 signature," said Paris 2024 Olympics president Tony Estanguet
The 2024 Olympics will allow medalists to take a piece of Paris with them.
Organizers revealed on Thursday that the 2024 Paris Games medals will each have a piece of original iron from the Eiffel Tower. To create the revolutionary design, the planning committee called upon Chaumet, a French jewelry house.
“We consulted the archives department with two main ideas in mind: to process this piece of Eiffel Tower in the shape of a hexagon to represent France, and to put it in the center of the medal and in the center of a work of radiating and faceting gold," Chaumet creative director Clémentine Massonnat told Olympics.com.
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The website explains that each medal has "puddled iron [that] has been left in its original color" at its center and embossed with the Paris 2024 Games emblem to give a "two-tone effect."
Around the hexagon are thin lines at irregular intervals that are "struck rather than engraved" to represent "both France's radiance in the world and the athletes' radiant performances at the Games," per the website. The Paralympic medals will also be encrusted with the Eifel Tower icon.
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"As usual, Paris 2024 put the athletes at the center of the project. We wanted two things: to have similar medals for Olympians and Paralympians, and for the medals to include a piece of invaluable iron [from the Eiffel Tower]," five-time gold medal-winning biathlete Martin Fourcade told Olympics.com
The sentiment was shared by organizing committee president Tony Estanguet, who said in a statement that the plan was to make the medals "truly unique."
"If medals hold such power, it is also because they have remained through history, edition after edition, ever since the modern Olympic Games were created. At Paris 2024, we were faced with a new challenge: to magnify the medals and ensure that they said something about our Olympic and Paralympic Games. We wanted these medals to be truly unique, to bear the Paris 2024 signature" Estanguet said in a press release.
Les médailles traversent l'histoire édition après édition.
Nous avons voulu des médailles uniques et françaises.
Pour cela, nous avons marié le symbole le plus fort des Jeux, la médaille, avec le symbole absolu de Paris et de la France dans le monde entier, la tour Eiffel. pic.twitter.com/JO7XbtNUjq— Paris 2024 (@Paris2024) February 8, 2024
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The 2024 Olympic Games will be held from July 26 to Aug. 11. The 2024 Paralympic Games will take place between Aug. 28 and Sept. 8.
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