Paris 2024: The incredible story behind the Olympic and Paralympic medals
The athletes who will compete at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 now have an extra motivation to reach the podium: in addition to bringing home a gold, silver or bronze medal, they will also take a small piece of Paris with them, materialised by a section of the Eiffel Tower integrated in each one. Find out more about this unique creation below.
It all began with a rather special brief. Bring creativity and poignancy to a classic yet essential object symbolising the Olympic and Paralympic Games. But how can the medal be even more special? Is it possible to go beyond the traditional with something as classic and long-established as the medals? The answer: yes. By including a piece of France inside – literally.
Chaumet, the French jewellery house, used its world-recognised expertise to take the concept to another level in order to magnify the idea, make it shine and give life to something that could have been ridiculous, but turned out to be quite special. This time, the designers didn’t have to deal with a timeless diamond or a ruby, but a material that had aged. They decided to think of it and work with it: the Eiffel Tower, at the centre of an exceptional jewel.
Each medal made for Paris 2024, revealed on Thursday 8 February, has an original piece of the Eiffel Tower in it, and it comes with a supporting certificate of authenticity.
The hexagon shape, the radiation and the setting as three symbols
Once the brief was finalised and the decision to treat this old metal like a precious stone, the expert jewellers were free to interpret the design in their own way.
“We looked for inspiration in our heritage”, explains Clémentine Massonnat, creative director of Chaumet, during an Olympics.com visit to their workshop.
“We consulted the archives department with two main ideas in mind: to process this piece of Eiffel Tower in the shape of a hexagon to represent France, and to put it in the centre of the medal and in the centre of a work of radiating and faceting gold”.
To dive into their archives is an usual process, but it was a required step for them to see the possibility of using French history as an inspiration. The radiating idea came from one of the house’s speciality: head jewellery.
“Diamonds convey the idea of personal radiance”, she explained.
“It makes the person who wears it shine, and there's a very interesting parallel with medals. They are also an object that highlights the accomplishment of the person who wears it.”
More familiar with working with precious rocks, designers from Chaumet had to handle the difficulty of working on a new material, one that has aged and lived: the iron from the Eiffel Tower.
“We first made a drawing around this concept of a hexagon at the centre and the radiance around,” explains Massonnat.
“The radiance, it’s also about the radiance of France during the Olympic Games; the radiance of the athletes, but also a way to give life to a static object, like jewellery. When light hits the medal, it comes to life.
”A shiny hexagon, without forgetting a piece of originality with a ‘claw’ setting, which is normally used for the upper jewellery pieces, and which reminds us of the Eiffel Tower’s rivets."
But there is a small peculiarity.
“Why are the radiances completely irregular?”, asks Benoît Verhulle, the head of the workshops. “It’s made on purpose so the light plays with it without regularity. It highlights even more the athlete.
"In the original brief, [the city of] Paris was important and with this medal, we had to convey the feeling that it is Paris. For us, it's the City of Light so it was logic that the radiance is on this side of the medal”, he said.
It was by applying these three elements that the project was finalised: an Eiffel Tower hexagon set in the centre of a medal, studded with rays. The job was done... almost.
Afterwards, other peculiarities were designed and refined. After all, quality craftsmanship should be considered in all its forms.
Paris 2024 medals: small details that make all the difference
“We thought about it like a jewel”, explained Verhulle.
“Usually, there is a little clasp that comes out of the medal where the ribbon goes through. We’ve come up with a different system here.”
It's an innovative way of integrating the ribbon into the medal itself, because with an object like this, nothing can be left to chance.
As with every other edition of the Games, the story of the renaissance of the ancient Olympic Games in Olympia, Greece, is told on the other side of the Olympic medal.
The traditional figure of the medals, the goddess of victory Nike, is depicted in the foreground, in front of the Panathenaic Stadium, where the Olympic Games were first revived in 1896. But the 2024 edition has been given its own exception: the addition of an Eiffel Tower on the other side of the stadium.
On the front of the Paralympic medals, to ensure accessibility, the name of the edition has been written in Braille around an Eiffel Tower seen from a particular point of view.
“It is a point of view less common, but which is really graphic and recognisable,” explains Massonat.
“With the Eiffel Tower being at the heart of this project, on this side, we decided to add it again, but with a view from below, in elevation, by looking to the sky.”
It’s two more winks to French heritage as Louis Braille, the inventor of this writing system, was French. And it’s the same with the historical face of the Olympic medal showing the Eiffel Tower, which could be seen as a reference to the Olympic Games in Paris or Pierre de Coubertin.
Other evocations are creating a bond even stronger between France and the medals which will be awarded to future medallists.
Another fun fact makes the choice of Chaumet as the designer of those unique pieces even more legitimate: Gustave Eiffel was always a loyal client. In a very old accounting register, we can find an order in his name: “Purchase made by Gustave Eiffel in 1890”.
The 1889 Universal Exhibition - that presented the Eiffel Tower to the world - made Gustave Eiffel famous.
A short time later Eiffel's daughter married, and for this special occasion, he purchased a pearl necklace from Chaumet. His children then became clients of Chaumet, and today, the work which made him known all over the world is celebrated at the heart of the medals which will represent Paris 2024.
The final link in this crucial stage in preparation of the medals is Monnaie de Paris (Paris Mint), a French establishment usually responsible for producing the national currency. Once Paris 2024 validated the design, Monnaie de Paris were given the keys to produce the 5,084 medals that will be awarded to the various athletes on the podiums at Paris 2024.