Gold Medals Are Already Falling Apart At the Games

BY JARED DIAMOND IN MILAN AND RACHEL BACHMAN IN CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, ITALY

AMERICAN ALPINE SKIER Breezy Johnson had been an Olympic champion for all of 15 minutes before realizing she had a problem. Her newly awarded gold medal couldn’t handle the intensity of her celebration.

In her excitement after winning Sunday’s downhill event in the mountains of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Johnson couldn’t help but jump for joy. Then the unthinkable happened: The gold disc hanging around her neck separated from the ribbon holding it in place, leaving the prize she had been dreaming about for her entire life in two pieces.

“I don’t know that Italians are known for their engineering,” Johnson said in the home nation of Ferrari, Fiat and Enrico Fermi.

Just a few days into these Games, it has become clear that the medals here weren’t crafted with quite the same care as a pair of Ferragamos. Johnson isn’t the only athlete wondering why the people who spent nearly six centuries building the Duomo couldn’t figure out a better way to attach a medal to a ribbon.

Olympic organizers spent Sunday scrambling to find the source of the problem. Andrea Francisi, the chief games operations officer for Milan Cortina 2026, said that officials are investigating the issue “with maximum attention” after seeing images of Johnson and others.

“Obviously, this is something we want to be perfect,” Francisi said, “because when a medal is handed over, this is one of the most important moments for the athletes.”

On Monday, the organizing committee said it had identified a solution and encouraged athletes with broken medals to return them so “they can be promptly repaired.”

In the meantime, Olympic athletes from the streets of Milan to the far reaches of the Dolomites are all learning an important lesson: If you win a medal, treat it with kid gloves.

Not long after the U.S. won the team figure skating event on Sunday night, Alysa Liu posted a video on Instagram of herself holding her gold medal in one hand and the ribbon in the other. She included the caption, “My medal don’t need the ribbon.”

The problem isn’t limited to gold medals. Shortly after taking bronze in the parallel giant slalom Sunday, Bulgarian snowboarder Tervel Zamfirov was running when the medal detached from the lanyard. He managed to reattach it.

Ebba Andersson wasn’t so lucky. Swedish media reported that her silver medal for skiathlon fell off its strap and disappeared under the snow, prompting a frantic search. The medal was recovered, but she gave up trying to find the clasp that had failed to keep it connected to the ribbon.

The German biathlon team posted a video on social media showing the exact moment disaster struck for Justus Strelow. He and his mixed relay teammates were dancing to “Funkytown” when his bronze medal detached from the ribbon and plummeted to the ground. “Hey Olympics,” the team wrote in all-caps, “What’s up with those medals?”

What’s up with the medals is this: They were created by IPZS, the State Mint and Polygraphic Institute, a government-owned company that produces Italian coins, stamps and passports. The prizes have a diameter of just over 3 inches and are less than half an inch thick. A gold medal weighs just over 1 pound.

IPZS, which declined to comment, made the medals using recycled materials recovered from its own production waste.

In an announcement last year unveiling the 2026 medals, Italian rhythmic gymnast Alessia Maurelli said, “An Olympic medal is never just a piece of metal.”

Except this time, that’s exactly what they are—and not a very reliable one at that.