Why Winter Olympic medals broke and what the failure revealed

Italy has promised lasting Olympic medals. Science had other plans.

By Eric Sullivan edited by Andrea Thompson

From skating to curling, the exciting sports of the Winter Olympics are backed by a wealth of scientific data. Follow our coverage here to find out more.

BReezy Johnson had just won gold for the United States in alpine skiing. Moments after it passed around his neck, she jumped up and down and the object broke.

The ribbon clip has broken. She wasn’t alone. A video of American figure skater Alysa Liu’s medal, without a ribbon, has made the rounds on social media. German biathlete Justus Strelow watched his bronze crash to the ground in the middle of a victory dance on live television.

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What made the situation particularly awkward was what Giovanni Malagò, president of this year’s Winter Olympics organizing committee, said at the medal unveiling ceremony in Venice last July: “I can assure you that they will not deteriorate.” The medals were produced by the Italian National Mint from recycled metals melted in renewable energy furnaces – a stark contrast to medals from the 2024 Summer Olympics, in Paris, which had developed what some athletes described as a crocodile skin texture within weeks of podium finish. That of Italy would be different. That of Italy would last.

Then Breezy Johnson jumped.

The organizing committee opened an investigation with the State Mint. Within days, they announced a fix. They didn’t say what it was.

To understand what happened, it helps to talk about nerdy metallurgy.

The medals feature an asymmetrical design consisting of two parts, one smooth and one textured, intended to fit together to represent the city of Milan and the city of Cortina d’Ampezzo, urban and alpine respectively. It’s the entire aesthetic concept of the Games compressed into around 500 grams of recycled metal. Under International Olympic Committee rules, “gold” medals are mostly silver – at least 92.5% – with a thin coating of gold; silver medals are the same silver without the gilding. Bronze medals are mostly made of copper.

These are beautiful objects. Rather than hanging from a traditional metal loop soldered on the exterior, the ribbon feeds directly into an internal cavity hidden between the two halves of the medal. The setup relies on a detachable safety clasp, a small mechanism designed to open under force to prevent strangulation, like badge lanyards at any conference. It was a good idea, but the execution didn’t hold up.

Laura Bartlett, associate professor of metallurgical engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, says the primary failure could be as simple as an undersized part or a weak joint. “Perhaps the size of the section was too small for the weight of the metal it was intended to support,” she says. In other words, perhaps the cross section was too thin for a heavy medal. If the clasp was soldered to the heavy silver body, air contamination could have introduced invisible weaknesses. “If you end up with a defect, like hydrogen porosity, for example, that’s a defect that can reduce the strength at the area of joint,” says Bartlett. (Think of the little bubbles trapped where you are. They need the most strength.)

It’s tempting to blame frigid mountain air for the breakage, but metallurgy doesn’t bear that out. When athletes reported that their dropped medals were dented or chipped, some speculated that the cold had made the material brittle. Silver and gold, however, do not have a ductile to brittle transformation point. “They are generally as ductile at room temperature as they are at minus five degrees Celsius,” says Bartlett.

But Ductile does not mean indestructible. “It’s a pretty ductile material, but it’s not very strong,” Bartlett says. “Silver or gold is pretty weak, so if you drop it, you’re going to damage it no matter what.” A true crack, rather than a dent resulting from a violent drop, would be much stranger, indicating a pre-existing casting defect, such as a “hot tear”, where internal stresses build up as the metal cools in its mold.

This 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 type of process you choose when you want clean edges and fine surface detail. You start with a wax pattern, build a ceramic shell around it by repeated immersions, burn the wax then pour molten metal into the cavity. Because ceramic clay is so fine – “like flour,” Bartlett says – it can capture details that other methods can’t capture.

One might assume that the metal poured into this shell was the cause, as the Mint proudly used recycled production scraps rather than virgin silver. But Bartlett says we can also cross that off the suspect list. “Most foundries that melt and cast these types of metals start with a scrap metal mix,” she says. “You can refine it and turn even scrap metal into something that has properties as good as the original virgin metal.” Bartlett also notes that induction melting – the method described by the Mint – is a very common and flexible way to melt metal, especially when scrap metal is part of the raw material.

If the material is sound and the cold is not to blame, the problem probably goes back to the original design of the material. Host cities have always grappled with the gap between a beautiful concept and a functional object, and tying the ribbon has been a persistent headache for decades. Olympic medals were not designed to be worn around the neck until 1960, when a laurel leaf chain was introduced in Rome, and ribbons subsequently became the standard. The move to a ribbon-hung design introduced an engineering problem that no Games have solved in quite the same way, and they solved it with varying degrees of success. The medals from the 2006 Turin Games got around the problem completely by featuring a large hole in the center of the medal itself, with the ribbon elegantly threaded through the middle.

For its part, the Paris 2024 problem was chemical and not structural; athletes at the time complained that some medals discolored and peeled within weeks. The French Mint reformulated its protective varnish after the European Union restricted chromium trioxide, a toxic chemical previously used to prevent corrosion. The replacement did not hold, leaving the copper-rich bronze particularly vulnerable to oxidation and rendering some medals stained and uneven.

As medal designs have become more ambitious, so have the physical demands. A recycled alloy medal with an asymmetrical shape and a precision detachable clasp, intended for the frigid mountain air, is a much more difficult engineering problem than a disc stamped on a ribbon.