Paris Olympics 2024: Do Olympics medals shine with a touch of real gold?

As world-class athletes compete for glory, one question may pop up about whether the coveted gold medals contain just gold. Check all you need to know about Paris Olympics 2024 medals here

The Paris Olympics 2024 are set to commence on Friday, marking the beginning of a nearly two-week sporting spectacle that the world had been waiting for months. With the opening ceremony tomorrow, the games will go on until August 11, expected to draw over 10 million visitors.

With the prestigious event, France expects to generate an estimated €3 billion in revenue and eyes a sharp uptick in the growth of its tourism industry.

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Paris Olympics 2024 MEDAL TALLY

Besides the host, the participating nations will be eyeing scoring their best-ever medal tally at the multi-sport event as they seek to set new world records.

 

For India, this opportunity is equally exciting as a team of 117 Indian athletes will represent the country at the games, hoping to register their best-ever medal tally in a single Olympic edition. In the Tokyo Olympics, India won seven medals overall, its best performance to date.

Metallic composition of Olympic medals

The Olympic medals are considered the holy grail of the sports fraternity. As world-class athletes compete for glory, one question may pop up about whether the coveted gold medals are made of real gold.

To clear the air, the medals are not entirely made of the precious yellow metal. According to the official website of the Tokyo Olympics, the last games, the composition of a gold medal has more than 6 grams of gold plating on pure silver. For silver, the committees use pure silver, and for bronze medals - 95 per cent copper and 5 per cent zinc - is used.

In terms of weight, the Tokyo gold medals weighed about 556g; Silver, about 550g; Bronze, about 450g with a diameter of 85 millimetre.

Paris Olympics 2024 medal tally

Paris Paralympics 2024 Gold medal

Paris Olympics 2024: Medals to have a piece of Eiffel Tower!

The official website of the Paris Olympics, which revealed the medals for this season in February, notes that this Olympics’ medals are unique in their way since they are adorned with “a symbol of the country, France’s crown jewel: the Eiffel Tower.”

This means that besides the usual composition of the metals, this time the medals will be adorned with a piece of the original iron used in the construction of the Eiffel Tower.

Tony Estanguet, President of the Paris 2024 Organising Committee said that this decision was taken keeping in mind the desire to make these objects unique.

To make this happen, jewellery expert Chaumet was chosen for the task of creating medals, the website explains.