Maybe organizers ran out of money.
How else to explain the sorry state of Olympic medals awarded at the 2024 Paris Games.
French Olympic swimmers Yohann Ndoye-Brouard and Clement Secchi took to social media to show how shoddy the workmanship was on their bronze medals.
In a weekend post on X, Ndoye-Brouard showed a medal that looked like an antique and wrote tongue in cheek: “Paris 1924.” It’s true, the medal looked more like an item that’s 100 years old than one that was made in the last year.
Ndoye-Brouard won bronze in the men’s 4x100m medley relay.
The 24-year-old was responding to teammate Secchi’s post of his own medal which he’d compared to “crocodile skin,” according to the Daily Mail.
The medals previously had been ripped during the summer by other athletes, including American skateboarder Nyjah Huston.
Huston posted on Instagram that while the medals looked “great when they’re brand new,” things changed.
“After letting it sit on my skin with some sweat for a little bit and letting my friends wear it over the weekend, they’re apparently not as high quality as you’d think. It’s looking rough.”
Huston added, “I don’t know, Olympic medals, we gotta step up the quality a little bit.”
The complaints seem to focus on issues with bronze medals.
The medals were designed by jeweler Chaumet, with a piece of the Eiffel Tower included in every Olympic and Paralympic prize.
Games organizers had responded to the Daily Mail in August saying they were aware of the situation and were “working closely with the Monnaie de Paris, the institution tasked with the production and quality control of the medals, and together with the National Olympic Committee of the athlete concerned, in order to appraise the medal to understand the circumstances and cause of the damage.”