Review of Olympic medal designs from previous Summer Games – Winnipeg Free Press

PARIS (AP) – Athletes who won Olympic and Paralympic medals at the Paris Games will return home to the French capital's most famous landmark.

Metals from girders and girders swapped over the years from the iconic Eiffel Tower have been preserved, cut, polished and inserted into the heart of each of the nearly 5,100 medals to be awarded at the Olympics starting July 26. August 11 and subsequent Paralympic Games.

The bold and revolutionary concept continues the series of exciting and sophisticated medal designs used for the greatest show on earth.

Take the postponed Tokyo Games in 2021, when American 400-meter hurdler Sydney McLaughlin and others on the podium have won medals made of metal from recycled consumer electronics for the past two years. Among the nearly 80,000 tons of discarded devices collected were approximately 6.2 million used cell phones, as well as disassembled and melted digital cameras and laptops.

The medals presented in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 were made from recycled materials from things like scrap mirrors and X-ray plates.

When Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia won gold in the pole vault at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she was adorned with a jade stone – a decorative rock – decorated with a dragon-carved medal, symbolizing nobility and virtue.

Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt's reward for winning so many gold medals at the 2012 London Olympics were medals that displayed the official logo of the games on a grid of lines. Or the organizers described it as an “architectural expression, a metaphor for the modern city.”