The Olympic skateboarder Nyjah Huston appears to have gone from a bronze medalist to a kind of bronze medalist at the Paris Games.
The American won bronze on 29 July but 10 days later he posted an Instagram story showing the medal appeared to have degraded significantly, with the surface looking dull and rusted.
“Alright, so these Olympic medals look great when they’re brand new, but after letting it sit on my skin with some sweat for a little bit and then letting my friends wear it over the weekend, they’re apparently not as high quality as you would think,” he said. “I mean, look at that thing. It’s looking rough. Even the front. It’s starting to chip off a little. So yeah, I don’t know, Olympic medals, you maybe gotta step up the quality a little bit.”
Huston added in a further post that the “medal looks like it went to war and back.”
Paris 2024 medals contain a sliver of the Eiffel Tower as a nod to the host city but the exact make up of medals vary between Olympics. Gold medals are actually mostly silver with a gold coating. Bronze medals are usually a mix of copper, zinc and tin. Bronze combines with oxygen in the air if it is unprotected, forming a dull patina which would explain the damage to Huston’s medal. How quickly bronze degrades depends on the proportion of metals in the alloy, although cheaper metals often quicken the process.
“As any regular alloy, exposure to moisture will lead to decay. But having an alloy with cheap metals will catalyse the process,” Neeraj Gupta, a sculptor, told Indian Express.
A spokesperson for Paris 2024 told Time that athletes would be given replacements for any damaged medals.
“Paris 2024 is aware of a social media report from an athlete whose medal is showing damage a few days after it was awarded,” said the spokesperson. “Paris 2024 is working closely with the Monnaie de Paris, the institution tasked with the production and quality control of the medals, and together with the National Olympic Committee of the athlete concerned, in order to appraise the medal to understand the circumstances and cause of the damage.”
Huston, one of the most decorated skateboarders of all time, does not have much experience with bronze medals: he usually wins gold. The 29-year-old is a six-time world champion in street skateboarding and has won 12 golds at the Summer X Games.
