2024 Olympic Medals: All That Glitters is Not Gold
As the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics opens today (July 26) the focus will be on the athletes, the opening ceremony and the excitement the event is generating across the French capital.
The medals for which thousands of Olympians will compete are yet to take centre stage. But what of these gongs? Where does the metal from which they’re made come? And how much are they worth?
To most of the athletes, of course, the medals will be priceless but what of their metal content? What would that fetch?
Well, on the morning of July 26, based on the spot price of gold, silver and iron, the podium cost of a 2024 Olympic gold medal was approximately $950. And before you ask – yes, that’s right: gold medals are not pure gold. Far from it.
The Olympic gold medal weighs 529 grams, and is 95% silver (505g). Only six grams is pure gold, which is in the plating. There is also 18g of iron mixed in there.
The value of the gold medal for the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad Paris (as it’s officially known) is actually the highest value of any gold medal in the history of the modern games, surpassing the $708 record for the 2012 London Olympics.
The silver medal weighs 525g, and contains 507g of silver and 18g of iron. Its value, based on the July 24 silver spot price for silver and iron, is round $486.
The bronze medal weighs 455g and is made of 415g of copper, 21g of zinc and 18g of iron. Its podium value is approximately $13 – barely enough to buy a crêpe from one of the many fast food vendors peppering the streets of Paris.
But it's not the glittering gold or sparking silver that we should focus on here, but the plain old iron that the athletes will be hanging around their necks. Because the iron in these medals is not just any old iron; it comes from the Eiffel Tower – or the ‘Iron Lady’, as she is known to Parisians. It's taken from sections of the monument that were removed a few years ago to modernise the elevator section.
Where did the Eiffel Tower iron originate?
The primary raw materials used in the Eiffel Tower's construction were cast iron and steel, both of which were sourced from Romania.
Romanian steel and cast iron was chosen mainly because of a gifted Romanian engineer called George Panculescu, who was a world-renowned innovator in the field of manufacturing railway tracks.
Word of Panculescu’s expertise eventually reached Gustave Eiffel, who was seeking a means of building the Tower in record time, because the Tower was built to mark the opening of the 1889 Universal Exhibition.
And so in 1879, Eiffel visited the Romanian engineer and the two decided to source the raw materials from Ghelari Mine, in Ghelar, Romania. The mine was a duel open pit and underground iron ore operation, and sat 411km north-west of Bucharest. Ghelari had one of the largest iron ore reserves in Romania, with estimated reserves of 14 million tonnes of ore.
The iron itself was manufactured in the forges of the city of Pompey, Lorraine, in the east of France. The cast iron was produced in the time-honoured way: by the reduction of iron ore through a process called “puddling”, which removes excess carbon, so that the remaining iron is almost pure and extremely robust.
Base metal makes Olympic Gold priceless
The medals have been designed by LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy is a French multinational specialising in luxury goods, headquartered in Paris.
It was formed in 1987 through the merger of fashion house Louis Vuitton (founded in 1854) with Moët Hennessy, which was established following the 1971 merger between the champagne producer Moët & Chandon (founded in 1743) and the cognac producer Hennessy. In 2023, the company was ranked 47th in the Forbes Global 2000.
The medals are designed by Chaumet – part of the LVMH group – a French luxury jewellery and watch house based in Paris.
By integrating Gustave Eiffel’s iron into one of the most prestigious items on earth, organisers of Paris Games have made these precious medals about as French as any object can be.
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