Great Britain Reaches Medal Milestone

photo courtesy of Paris 2024

On 7 August, Day 12 of the Paris 2024 summer Olympics, Great Britain reached a milestone of 1,000 medals in Olympic modern games history, according to the official stats. According to UK Sport, British and Northern Irish athletes have competed at every single Olympic Games since 1896, when the modern Olympic Games first took place in Athens, and the country’s first Olympic champion in 1896 was Launceston Elliott, who won the one-handed lift in weightlifting. “The Great Britain and Northern Ireland team still have the distinction of being the only nation to have won a gold medal at every edition of the summer Games since,” according to UK Sport. And, for the Paris Olympics, the medals are even more special as each one contains an 18-gram hexagonal chunk of iron taken from the Eiffel Tower. According to Panam Sports, “In 2008, the Eiffel Tower’s elevators were modernized, which meant removing several pieces of iron from the tower that were carefully stored by Parisian authorities.” French jewelry house Chaumet were chosen to create the medals. The brown paint was removed, and the iron pieces are in their original color with the phrase “Paris 2024” along with the image of the Olympic torch and five Olympic rings engraved into them. “We decided to add this hexagon (representing the shape of France) in the same way we would do with a precious stone, in the center and placed as the most precious element of the medal,” Clementine Massonnat, head of creative activities of Chaumet, told Panam Sports.