Paris Olympics medals to feature pieces of ‘Eiffel Tower’

A hexagonal piece of iron from the original Eiffel Tower will be at the center of the medals to be awarded at the Olympics and Paralympics, according to the organizers of the Paris Olympics

All 5,084 gold, silver, and bronze medals that will be awarded to athletes at the Paris Games will feature a six-sided metal medallion designed by the elite French jewelry firm Chaumet. Embedded within each medal is a fragment from the Eiffel Tower dating back to its construction in 1889. 

“We wanted to offer to all medal winners at the Paris Olympics and Paralympics a piece of the Eiffel Tower from 1889,” said the head of the local organizing committee, Tony Estanguet, at a televised ceremony.

They will be “a combination of the most precious metals from the medals – gold, silver and bronze – with the most precious metal in our country, from this treasure that is the Eiffel Tower,” he explained.

The design by Chaumet, whose creations have adorned aristocrats and the affluent since 1780, also features a circular arrangement of ridges intended to catch the light and evoke the sun’s rays.

The iron hexagon – a shape that echoes the contours of mainland France – is held in place by six spurs on each corner, intended to resemble the rivets used on the Eiffel Tower.

The metal was taken from a Paris warehouse used to stock offcuts by the operating company that maintains the 330-metre (1,083-foot) landmark, known affectionately as the “Old Lady” in France.

“We found out that over the years during the maintenance of the Eiffel Tower that they were obliged to remove some of the original structure,” Thierry Reboul, the director of branding and ceremonies, explained during an advance preview of the medals for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and other media.

“We used these pieces. There were more than enough of them.”

The medal design is a key part of each game’s aesthetic, along with the logo, mascots and opening ceremony.

Since 2004, the back of all medals show the Greek goddess Nike flying into the historic Panathinaikos stadium in Athens, site of the original Olympic Games of antiquity.

Paris organisers squeezed a concession from the International Olympic Committee, enabling them to slightly alter the design to add an Eiffel Tower to the scene.

All the metal used in the Paris medals, which weighs around 0.5 kilograms, has been recycled.

The last Olympics in Tokyo saw Japanese organizers also incorporate recycled metal, with each medal molded from alloys extracted from used consumer electronics such as mobile phones and laptops.

Source: Agence France-Presse