For the second Olympics in a row there are complaints about the quality of the medals being awarded to the athletes.
It was U.S. Olympic alpine skier Breezy Johnson, mere hours removed from having the medal placed around her neck on Sunday, who revealed that her medal broke from merely jumping around with it on. According to the Associated Press, Johnson is one of several athletes who broke their medals since the start of the games.
Per the report, Johnson said that the medals were fixed and replaced by Tuesday, but still need to be properly engraved.
“Don’t jump in them. I was jumping in excitement and it broke,” Johnson said on Sunday. “I’m sure somebody will fix it. It’s not crazy broken but a little broken.”
Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters via Imagn Images
Johnson was not, however, allowed to keep the broken version to show off for others.
"They don’t, like, let you have multiple of those things,” Johnson said.
But while Alice couldn't show what happened to her former medal, there was a little bit of embarrassment over the past few days from incidents of medals either loses chips or falling off the ribbon entirely.
On Sunday, German biathlete Justus Strelow saw his bronze medal fall off the ribbon while he was dancing with his teammates. The following day, Alysa Liu shared a clip of her gold medal in figure skating coming off the ribbon.
Members of the Milan Cortina 2026 organizing committee are looking into the situation and "working on it."
“We are aware of the situation, we have seen the images. We are trying to understand in detail if there is a problem,” Milan Cortina 2026 chief games operations officer Andrea Francisi said Monday.
“But we are paying maximum attention to this matter, as the medal is the dream of the athletes, so we want that in the moment they are given it that everything is absolutely perfect, because we really consider it to be the most important moment. So we are working on it.”
As mentioned earlier, there are prior Olympics where there have been issues with the quality of the medals. The 2024 Summer Olympics saw multiple medals need to be replaced as the metal seemed to tarnish or corrode within hours of being awarded.