(Kitco News) - The 2024 Summer Games in Paris will kick off with a bang on Friday, with tousands of athletes from around the world coming together to compete for the top prize: an Olympic gold medal.
While the amount of bullion in each prize has remained a constant in all Olympics medals, unique elements are featured in all the designs, and Paris 2024 is no different.
This will actually be the third time Paris has hosted the Summer Games and the 2024 medals reflect the city’s rich history. Each medal is set with an original piece of the Eiffel Tower, which was built a year before Paris’ first summer games in 1900.
The medals for this year’s Olympics were created by LVMH jeweler Chaumet.
“Globally renowned for its craftsmanship, Chaumet has made the medal into a veritable jewel, with a construction conceived around three sources of inspiration: the hexagon, radiance, and gem-setting,” the Paris 2024 committee said in a statement.
The piece of the Eiffel Tower is in the shape of a hexagon, representing the shape of France.
The other side of the medal features the goddess of victory Athena Nike, emerging from the Panathenaic Stadium that witnessed the revival of the Olympic Games in 1896. This has been a standard feature on all medals since 2004.
For Paralympic medals, the other side features a graphic representation of the Eiffel Tower as seen from below. The medal also has ‘Paris’ and ‘2024’ written in Braille, the tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired which was created by French inventor Louis Braille.
Aside from the unique features, the medals are created to fixed specifications, established by the International Olympic Committee.
In keeping with Olympic guidelines, the gold medal contains only six grams of actual gold bullion. According to reports, the gold medal weighs 529 grams, and it is made with 92.5% silver and plated with gold representing 1.34% of the metal, with the remainder made of copper.
With such little gold, the melt value of the medal is just over $1,000. If the medal as made of pure gold it would be worth $45,000.
The silver medal, which weighs 525 grams, is 92.5% silver with the remainder made of copper.
The bronze medal weighs 455 grams and is composed of 97% copper, 2.5% zinc and 0.5% tin.
All of the medals are 85 millimeters across and 9.2 millimeters thick.
An estimated 5,084 medals were created for the games — roughly 2,600 for the Olympics and 2,400 for the Paralympics.
The Opening Ceremonies of the Paris Summer Games will begin at 7:30 p.m. local time, or 1:30 p.m. EDT, on Friday, July 26.
