Paris Olympics: 2024 medals to include piece of Eiffel Tower

The Olympians who earn a medal during the 2024 Summer Olympics will take home not just a piece of Olympic history, but also a piece of Paris history.

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The medals for the Paris Olympics were unveiled on Thursday, with organizers announcing that a piece of metal from the Eiffel Tower will be embedded in them.

The medals will still be made from gold, silver or bronze, but each will be “adorned with a small piece of Paris and a symbol of the country of France: the Eiffel Tower.”

“There was a huge amount done to try to bring together these precious metals - gold, silver and bronze - with the most precious metal in the Eiffel Tower, the jewel in the French crown. So what’s specific about the 2024 medals is that meshing together, that fusion, that alloy…,” said Tony Estanguet, president of the games’ organizing committee.

“What’s impactful for this year will be having a part of the original Eiffel Tower metal, the iron, in these various medals, and so this is what we wanted to do, to infuse all these 2024 athletes with that metal.”

The piece of the tower is cut into a hexagon and is not painted the “Eiffel Tower brown,” but will remain its natural iron color. It will be in the center of the medal, mounted like a gem, and embossed with the Paris 2024 Games’ emblem. The medals have struck rays surrounding the piece of the tower, which “embodies both France’s radiance in the world and the athletes’ radiant performances at the Games.”

The side of the medal with the Eiffel Tower on it will be the same for both the Olympic and Paralympic games. On the other side, the name of the sport, discipline and event will be engraved on the edge of the medal, with the Olympic Games engraved in French and the Paralympic Games engraved in English for each of the organizations’ official languages, officials said.

There will be 5,084 medals made, with each being 85 mm (3.46 inches) in diameter and 9.2 mm (.36 inches) thick. The medals will include 18 grams of iron from the Eiffel Tower.

The weights of the medals, however, will differ slightly:

• 529g for gold.
• 525g for silver.
• 455g for bronze.

Olympic organizers said that since the first modern Olympic Games started in Athens in 1896, there have been about 36,600 medals awarded.

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Olympic medals Athens 1896 Olympic medal. One of Ellery Clark's Olympic medals from 1896.(Photo by JOEY MCLEISTER/Star Tribune via Getty Images) (Star Tribune via Getty Images/Star Tribune via Getty Images)

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