The medals at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games will carry an 18-gram fragment of the original Eiffel Tower from 1889, organizers announced this Thursday.
"We had to look for a symbol of the country and the capital, the Eiffel Tower. We couldn't be satisfied with just drawing it on the medal, we had to look for the link," said the president of the Organizing Committee, the expirist Tony Estanguet, the only Frenchman who has won three golds in three different Games.
Each of the more than 5,000 medals that will be distributed during the Games that begin next July 26 will have embedded the fragment of the most visited monument in the city and one of the symbols of the country.
"The most sought-after metal of the Games, gold, silver and bronze, united with the most precise metal of the country, the national symbol. It is a meeting between both things," he added.
Estanguet assured that they were looking for "something that symbolized the efforts of the athletes, but also that was a jewel," so they worked with Chaumet, one of the most famous jewelers in the world, located in the luxurious Place Vendôme.
"Each edition is represented by its medals and it was important for ours to be as beautiful as possible, to show the best of France and to carry a strong message," said Estanguet, who pointed out that they were also based on the medals from the Games. from 1900 and 1924, both also in Paris.
Athletes also participated in the conception through the commission headed by former Olympic medalist Martin Fourcade, the Frenchman with the most medals in his record, who assured that "there is nothing more symbolic than taking a piece of French heritage."
The gold design represents a sun, which aims to mark the brilliance of the country, in the center of which is the hexagonal fragment - a nod to the shape of the map of France - of the Eiffel Tower, found in the archive of the builder's workshops of the "iron lady."
On the other hand, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requires that the goddess Athena appear leaving the Panatinaiko stadium in the Greek capital, as a link with the ancient Games.
But Paris has received permission to also include a drawing of the Eiffel Tower on that side, in homage to Baron Pierre de Courbertin, father of the modern Olympic Games.
In the case of the Paralympic Games, which will also feature a fragment of the Eiffel Tower, the view of the monument is from the lower part and the inscriptions are in Braille, a language for the blind created by the Frenchman Louis Braille in 1825.
Paralympic athlete Beatriz Hass, who with 20 medals is the Frenchwoman who has won the most medals, highlighted the importance of the medal having been "treated like a jewel."
"It is the first time that a jeweler designs the medals for a Games, it is quite a symbol," said Antoine Arnault, heir to the LVMH luxury brand group, owner of Chaumet.
With this initiative, Paris 2024 "continues its ambition" to create "Games that leave their mark," Estanguet estimated, at the origin of ideas such as taking the opening ceremony to the waters of the Seine or certain sports to monuments in the capital, such as the Eiffel Tower itself, the Grand Palais or the Place de la Concorde.
