The French, proud of their cultural emblems, are happy that the medals for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games contain a fragment of the original Eiffel Tower, from 1889.
According to the organizing committee, in an announcement on Thursday, February 8, the prize for the sporting event will be special. It will contain 18 grams of the original tower material. The idea of including this portion of the French symbol on the medals was promoted by “the president of the Organizing Committee, the sprinter Tony Estanguet, the only Frenchman to have won three golds in three different Games.”
Estanguet explained that each of the more than 5,000 medals of the Olympic Games “which 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 in the country, the national symbol. It’s a meeting between both things.”
By searching for a link between the French and the efforts of each athlete, they arrived at what they have defined as a true gem in which Chaumet, one of the most famous jewelers in the world, has participated. The medals will be considered part of French heritage.
Design of the medals for the 2024 Olympic Games
The design took into account details from the medals from the 1900 and 1924 Games, also held in Paris. It also had “the athletes participating through the commission led by former Olympic medalist Martin Fourcade, the Frenchman with the most medals.”
The medal, in gold, represents a sun that seeks to highlight the brilliance of the country. In the center is embedded the hexagonal fragment of the original tower, “found in the archive of the workshops of the builder of the iron lady.”
The opposite side will show the goddess Athena leaving the Panatinaiko stadium in the Greek capital, as ordered by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Regarding the Paris 2024 Paralympic medals, they will show the Eiffel Tower from the bottom, with the “inscriptions are in Braille, a language for the blind created by the Frenchman Louis Braille in 1825.”
M.Pino
Source: DW
(Reference image source: Chris Karidis at Unsplash)
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