Culture
When athletes win Olympic gold medals in Paris, they'll get a piece of the Eiffel Tower
Winning an Olympic gold medal is considered a crowning achievement for an athlete, so it’s only fitting that the physical medal represents the significance.
What’s on each gold medal is special for every Olympic Games, but Paris 2024 is particularly notable because, when athletes win gold, they will take home a piece of the Eiffel Tower, an iconic landmark of the host city.
The Eiffel Tower played a major role in the Paris 2024 opening ceremony. From beaming lights and the Olympic rings to the comeback performance of Celine Dion, “La Tour Eiffel” showcased its grandeur to the world. And now, it will be part of the athletes’ medal collections.
What else is unique about these gold medals and how are they connected to the Eiffel Tower? Here’s what to know.
How many Olympic medals are created?
Around 5,084 medals were developed for Paris 2024, per multiple reports, which note that approximately 2,600 medals have been created for the Olympics and 2,400 for the Paralympics.
How much do the Olympic gold medals weigh?
The gold medal weighs 1.17 pounds. The silver medal, by comparison, weighs 1.16 pounds while the bronze is one pound.
Who designed the Olympic gold medals?
Chaumet, the French luxury jewelry and watch brand, designed the Olympic medals. Founded in 1780, Chaumet is owned by LVMH (Moët Hennessey Louis Vuitton).
What features are on the Olympic gold medals?
The Olympic gold medal consists of three features: the hexagon, radiance and setting.
In the middle of the medal is a hexagon. It pays homage to France’s nickname “L’hexagone” given the country’s roughly six-sided shape.
The hexagon is surrounded by several strand-like shapes. This symbolizes the radiant light, as Paris is often referred to as the “city of light.”
On the six edges of the hexagon are claw settings. The shape is similar to those found in the rivets on the Eiffel Tower.
Olympic rings were illuminated on the Eiffel Tower during the opening ceremony of 2024 Games in Paris. (Photo: Ludovic Marin – Pool / Getty)
What is the Eiffel Tower connection?
The Eiffel Tower was the defining fixture of the 1889 World Fair. The original tower was made with wrought iron.
When the Eiffel Tower underwent renovations in the 20th century, they preserved pieces of the original iron and kept them in storage. Those chunks make up the hexagon figure in the middle of the Olympic gold medal.
According to multiple reports, 0.04 pounds of iron renovation pieces from the Eiffel Tower are included in each medal.
Gold, silver and bronze medals began at the 1904 St. Louis Olympic Games. It’s estimated that 1,011 medals — in terms of the Games’ medal count — will be handed out at Paris 2024 (more medals were developed to account for team events). This is the first time a piece of a city’s historic landmark is included in an Olympic medal.
How much is an Olympic gold medal worth?
According to Forbes, a Paris 2024 Olympic gold medal is worth approximately $950.
What happens at the medal ceremony?
The gold medal is placed around the winning athlete’s neck atop the podium. The athlete also receives a stuffed souvenir of the Paris 2024 mascot. Then, the national anthem of the winning athlete’s country plays — a tradition that began for gold medalists at medal ceremonies in 1932.
Required reading
More on the 2024 Paris Olympics from The Athletic…
(Photo: Thomas Samson / AFP via Getty Images)
Welcome to Literary Quotable Quotes, a quiz that tests your recognition of classic lines. This week’s installment highlights observations from future or alternate worlds depicted in popular science fiction. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’re intrigued and inspired to read more.
Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. This week’s challenge tests your memory of books that made huge impacts on society after they were published — some of them even spurring changes to American laws. In the five multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
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