Olympic skateboarder Nyjah Huston appears to have gone from bronze medalist to sort of bronze medalist at the Paris Games.
The American won bronze on July 29, but ten days later he posted an Instagram story showing that the medal appeared to be significantly damaged, with its surface looking dull and rusted.
“So, these Olympic medals look great when they’re brand new, but after leaving them for a while with some sweat on my skin and then having my friends wear them over the weekend, apparently they’re not as high quality as you would think,” he said. “I mean, look at the thing. It looks rough. Even the front. It’s starting to chip a little bit. So, yeah, I don’t know, with Olympic medals, maybe you have to step up the quality a little bit.”
Huston added in another post that the “medal looks like it went to war and back.”
The Paris 2024 medals include part of the Eiffel Tower as a nod to the host city, but the exact composition of the medals varies from Olympics to Olympics. Gold medals are actually mostly silver with a gold coating. Bronze medals are usually made of a mixture of copper, zinc and tin. Bronze, when unprotected, combines with the oxygen in the air to form a dull patina, which would explain the damage to Huston’s medal. How quickly bronze decays depends on the percentage of metal in the alloy, although cheaper metals often speed up the process.
“Like any normal alloy, exposure to moisture causes deterioration. But an alloy with cheap metals accelerates the process,” sculptor Neeraj Gupta told Indian Express.
A Paris 2024 spokesperson told Time that athletes would be provided with replacements for any damaged medals.
“Paris 2024 is aware of a social media report from an athlete whose medal shows damage a few days after it was awarded,” the spokesperson said. “Paris 2024 is working closely with the Monnaie de Paris, the institution responsible for the production and quality control of the medals, and with the National Olympic Committee of the athlete concerned to assess the medal and understand the circumstances and causes of the damage.”
Huston, one of the most successful skateboarders of all time, doesn’t 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 gold medals at the Summer X Games.