This year, winners of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games will not only have the privilege of being crowned Olympians, but also of taking home a piece of history that once belonged to the very symbol of Paris and France: the Eiffel Tower.
The gold, silver and bronze medals, which were unveiled this month at the headquarters of the Paris 2024 organising committee, are unlike any of the medals designed in recent history, in that they each contain a hexagonal piece of metal derived from the Eiffel Tower during its various renovation works over the last century.
The metal, which occupies one side of the medal framed by a three-dimensional radial pattern, was stripped of its original paint and stamped with the emblem of the 2024 Olympic or Paralympic Games.
The committee explains that the decision for this was born from a desire to make the objects unique, while celebrating the return of the Games to France, last held there in 1992.
“To create this meeting between the most prestigious object of the Games and the iconic monument of France and Paris, Paris 2024 worked on the design of the medal with Chaumet, a LVMH Group company,” the committee said.
Olympian Martin Fourcade, who is chairing the Paris 2024 Athletes’ Commission, says the design of the medals, just like the Games, took an athlete-first approach. “There were three major inspirations behind this: the hexagon, the influence of France, and we also wanted the medal to be like a jewel – and that’s why it is set exactly like a precious stone.”
Jean-François Martins, President of the Société d’Exploitation de la tour Eiffel, the organisation responsible for preserving the disused metal, said with this design, each “medal has a historic character”.
“The Eiffel Tower, the daughter of Paris and site of major world events, had to be used to provide athletes with an unforgettable souvenir of Paris.”
As with every edition of the Games, the other side of the medal tells the story of the rebirth of the Games in Greece, featuring Nike, the goddess of victory, emerging from the Panathenaic Stadium, the place where the revival of the Olympic Games occurred in 1896.
For this edition, the Acropolis is joined by the Eiffel Tower, representing the inspiration of the ancient Games in Greece, the French origins of the modern Olympic Games, and their next edition in Paris.
The medal ribbons also feature a design inspired by the lattice work of the Eiffel Tower – the Olympic in dark blue and Paralympic in deep red. For the design of the latter, the medal is embossed with a graphic pattern that demonstrates a view of the Eiffel Tower from below.
Main image: Benoit Tessier via CNN
