Italy promises sustainable Olympic medals. Science had other plans.
A small design flaw in the medals of the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina turned the promise of durability into a very public stress test
The State Mint of Italy has designed the Milan Cortina medals to be beautiful, durable and long-lasting. Instead of a traditional metal loop soldered to the outside, the ribbon goes directly into a hidden internal cavity between the two halves of the medal.
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bRizzy Johnson recently won a gold medal for the United States in downhill skiing. A few moments after she went around his neck, she jumped up and down—and it broke.
Ribbon attachment cleared. He was not alone. A video of American figure skater Alyssa Liu’s medal hanging without a ribbon went viral on social media. German biathlete Justus Strehlow celebrates his bronze medal on live television, dancing in victory lap.
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What made it especially strange was something that Giovanni Malago, the president of the organizing committee of this year’s Winter Olympics, said. medal unveiling ceremony In Venice last July: “I can assure you they will not be spoiled.” The medals were produced by Italy’s own State Mint From recycled metals melted in renewable-energy furnaces – unlike the 2024 Summer Olympics medals in Paris, which within weeks of the podium had what some athletes described as a crocodile-skin texture. Italy will be different. Italy’s will last.
Then Breezy Johnson jumped in.
The organizing committee initiated an investigation with the State Mint. in a few days they announced a solution. He didn’t say what it was.
To understand what happened, it helps to talk metallurgy.
Features of medals An asymmetric two-part design– one smooth, one textured – which fit together to represent urban and alpine, the city of Milan and the city of Cortina d’Ampezzo respectively. It’s the entire aesthetic concept of the games compressed into about 500 grams of recycled metal. According to International Olympic Committee rules, “gold” medals are mostly silver – at least 92.5 percent – with a thin gold layer; Silver medals are the same silver without gilding. Bronze medals are mostly made of copper.
They are beautiful things. Instead of hanging from a traditional metal loop soldered to the outside, the ribbon goes straight inside an internal cavity Hidden between the two halves of the medal. The setup relies on a breakaway safety clasp, a small mechanism engineered to open under force to prevent strangulation, much like the badge lanyard at any convention. It was a great idea, but the implementation could not be done.
Laura Bartlett, associate professor of metallurgical engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, says the primary failure could be as simple as a small part or a weak joint. ““Maybe the size of the section was too small for the weight of metal it was supposed to support,” she says. In other words, the cross section might be too thin for a heavy medal. If the clasp was soldered or welded to a heavy silver body, contamination from the air could introduce invisible weaknesses. “For example, if you end up with a flaw like hydrogen porosity, that’s a flaw that can reduce the strength in the joint area,” (Think of a tiny bubble stuck right where you need the strength most, says Bartlett.)
It’s tempting to blame the icy mountain air for breakage, but metallurgy doesn’t support it. When athletes reported scratches or chipping in their fallen medals, some speculated that the cold had made the hardware brittle. However, silver and gold lack the ductile-to-brittle transition point. “They’re just as flexible at room temperature, typically, as they are at negative five degrees Celsius,” says Bartlett.
However, ductile does not mean indestructible. “It’s a fairly flexible material, but it’s not very strong,” Bartlett says. “Silver or gold are very fragile, and so, if you drop it, no matter what happens, you will dent it.” A true crack – rather than a dent caused by a hard fall – would be very strange, pointing to a pre-existing casting defect, such as a “hot tear”, where the metal develops internal stresses as it cools in its mold.
That mold is part of a complex manufacturing process. To achieve the medal’s high level of aesthetic detail, Bartlett suspects the Mint used investment casting – the kind of process you choose when you want crisp edges and fine surface detail. You start with a wax pattern, create a ceramic shell around it by making repeated dips, burn the wax and then pour the molten metal into the cavity. Because the ceramic solution is so fine — “like flour,” Bartlett says — it can capture details that other methods can’t.
American skier Breezy Johnson celebrates her Olympic gold medal win on February 8, just before it becomes separated from its ribbon due to a design flaw.
Luo Yunfei/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images
You can assume that the metal poured into that shell was the culprit since the mint proudly used recycled production waste instead of virgin silver. But Bartlett says we can remove him from the list of suspects too. “Most foundries that melt and cast these types of metals start with a scrap mix,” she says. “You can refine it and even turn the scrap into something that has the same good properties as the original virgin metal.” Bartlett also notes that induction melting – the method described by the Mint – is a very common, flexible way to melt metal, especially when scrap is part of the feedstock.
If the material is good and cold is not the culprit, the problem is probably down to the original design of the hardware itself. Host cities have always struggled with the gap between a beautiful concept and a functional object, and ribbon attachment has been a persistent headache for decades. Olympic medals were not designed to be worn around the neck until 1960. a laurel-leaf chain Was introduced in Rome, and later ribbons became standard. The change to the ribbon-hanging design presented an engineering problem that no two games have solved in the same way, and they have solved it with varying success. Medals at the Turin 2006 Games This issue was completely circumvented by making a large hole in the center of the medal, with the ribbon elegantly threaded through the middle.
On the other hand, the problem with Paris 2024 was chemical, not structural; At that time the athletes complained about this Some medals became discolored and flaky Within the week. The French mint then reformulated its protective varnish. EU bans chromium trioxideA toxic chemical formerly used to prevent rust. The replacement did not last, leaving the copper-rich bronze particularly sensitive to oxidation and some medals becoming tarnished and uneven.
As medal designs have become more ambitious, the physical demands have increased along with them. A recycled-alloy medallion with an asymmetric shape and a precision breakaway clasp that takes mountain air to subfreezing is a much harder engineering problem than a disk printed on a ribbon.
