In just one week after receiving the medal, an Olympian shocked the crowd by disclosing its condition.
Nyjah Huston, who skateboarded for the United States, won a bronze medal in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
In the men’s street final, Huston came in third behind Team USA’s Jagger Eaton and Japan’s Yuto Horigome.
However, Huston showed supporters the state of his most valuable property on Instagram just one week after taking pride in the podium, saying that he believed the medal would be of far higher quality.
In a video showing scuffs and discoloration on his bronze medal, the athlete said: “Alright, so the medals look great when they are brand new. But they look worse after I let them sit on my skin with some sweat for a little while and let my friends wear them over the weekend.”
He then noted that the quality of the piece was not great, stating: “They are apparently not as high quality as you would think. I mean, look at that thing, it is looking rough. Even the front is starting to chip off a little so I think the Olympic medals need to step up the quality a little bit.”
The video immediately went viral across multiple platforms including X (formerly Twitter), with this one user commenting: “That’s a real shame.”
“Next thing you know, they gonna give you NFTs for medals,” stated another.
However, others had seemingly reasonable explanations for it, with one person stating that “this is what bronze does”, while another X-user wondered if they were originally “silver-plated” and then colored.
A Paris Olympics representative has finally responded to the problem after it became a popular topic of conversation online.
“Paris 2024 is aware of a social media report from an athlete whose medal is showing damage a few days after it was awarded,” they said in a statement to the Daily Mail. “Paris 2024 is 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.”
“The medals are the most coveted objects of the games and the most precious for the athletes. Damaged medals will be systematically replaced by the Monnaie de Paris and engraved in an identical way to the originals,” they added.
Huston should be among the first to be replaced, hopefully.