On Thursday, organizers of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Video games unveiled a novel addition to this 12 months’s Olympic medals: items of the enduring Eiffel Tower. Every medal for the Video games will incorporate a hexagonal piece of iron taken from the guts of the Eiffel Tower, Paris’s most recognizable monument.
Constructed for the Exposition Universelle (World’s Honest) in 1889 to have fun the a hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, the tower was designed to showcase France’s industrial prowess and function an emblem for town. Each bit might be a focus within the centre of the medals.
Crafted by the French jeweller, Chaumet, the six-sided piece might be within the medal of all 5,084 gold, silver and bronze medals. “We wished to supply a chunk of the 1889 Eiffel Tower to all of the medallists of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Video games,” mentioned Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet.
It’s possible you’ll be asking the place did the steel come from? No, it was not minimize straight off the Eiffel Tower. In keeping with Inside The Video games, the steel was sourced from a steel warehouse in Paris by the corporate chargeable for sustaining the 330-metre landmark. The usage of recycled steel can also be according to the development seen on the Tokyo Olympics, the place the metals have been made partly from shopper electronics.
Distinctive image of a dream coming true.
The last word reward for a victory or a podium end!
They carry of their hearts an precise fragment of the Eiffel Tower.
Listed below are the #Paris2024 Olympic and Paralympic medals.@Olympics @Paralympics pic.twitter.com/08VLwyVwq6— Paris 2024 (@Paris2024) February 8, 2024
The reverse facet of the medals will function the Greek goddess Nike flying towards the historic Panathinaikos Stadium in Athens, a practice since 2004. With the approval of the Worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC), Paris organizers modified the design to include the Eiffel Tower within the background.
Past the medals, the Eiffel Tower will play a central function within the festivities on the Video games. From the opening ceremony, the place sports activities groups will sail down the River Seine, to the potential placement of the Olympic flame atop the tower, the enduring landmark might be a focus all through the Olympic and Paralympic Video games, which run from July 26 to Aug. 11, and the Paralympics, from Aug. 28 to Sept. 8.
