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2024 Paris Olympic Medals Tarnish
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Olympic Games Are the Olympic Games an overall benefit for their host countries and cities?

2024 Paris Olympic Medals Tarnish

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ProCon Debate: Are the Olympic Games an Overall Benefit for Their Host Countries and Cities?

ProCon Issue in the News: More than 100 Olympic athletes who participated in the recent 2024 Paris Summer Games have requested that their tarnishing medals be replaced, according to New York Times journalists Tariq Panja and Liz Alderman. The deterioration of the bronze medals seems to be the most pronounced.

The medals awarded at the 2024 Olympic Games were designed by Chaumet, a jeweler that is part of the LVMH group (which owns luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Tiffany & Co., and Moët & Chandon, among others). Monnaie de Paris, the French mint that has made money and other valuables since the Middle Ages, manufactured the medals. Each medal took 15 days to produce.

The French mint immediately launched an investigation into why the medals were tarnishing, concluding that the varnish used to prevent oxidation (which discolors metal) was defective thanks to a new recipe. The French had been forced to change the ingredients in the varnish after the European Union banned chromium trioxide in 2023. The mint has now revised the varnish recipe to better protect the replacement medals.

As the International Olympic Committee stated, “Damaged medals will be systematically replaced by the Monnaie de Paris and engraved in an identical way to the originals.”

The deterioration is especially troubling given the durability and value of Olympic medals over time—an Olympic medal from 1904, for example, sold for $545,371 in December 2024. The 1904 Games in St. Louis were the first ones hosted by the United States and were the first Games to award gold medals.

Discussion Questions

  • Are the Olympic Games a financial benefit for their host countries and cities? Consider unforeseen costs, such as replacing medals, as well as the usual costs, such as building sports arenas.
  • Should the Olympic Games award medals made of precious metals? Or would another prize be better? Explain your answer.

Sources

  1. Tariq Panja and Liz Alderman, “Paris Olympics Medals Are Tarnishing, Putting LVMH in the Spotlight” (January 20, 2025) nytimes.com
  2. Sarah Kuta, “This Rare Gold Medal from the 1904 Olympics Sold for More Than $500,000” (January 23, 2025) smithsonianmag.com
  3. CIRS, “EU to Remove Chromium (VI) Oxide from Authorisation List” (October 25, 2023) cirs-group.com