National Sports

What do Olympic athletes get when they win? More than just a medal.

Rather plain cardboard boxes became a source of intrigue and mystery when Olympians stepped to the podium to receive their medals. Just what, people wondered, was in those oblong boxes held aloft by athletes as they celebrated?

Each, it turns out, contains the official poster of the 2024 Paris Olympics, according to the Games’ official website.

“A lot of people have been asking, ‘What’s in the box that we get given on the podium when we receive our medals in Paris,” Australian canoeist Jessica Fox, a double gold winner, said Wednesday in a TikTok reveal that shows the posters are differentiated by gold, silver and bronze markings.

The poster, which is available for $32 online, was created by Ugo Gattoni and features his vision of a fantasy city that also contains landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Seine and Arc de Triomphe as well as depictions of some sports and the Olympic rings and medals. Joachim Roncin, director of design for the 2024 Paris Olympics, told Olympics.com that he “wanted the poster to tell countless things, to be full of symbols.”

But not everyone was pleased with the poster. French conservatives and far-right figures complained that a Christian cross atop the Dome des Invalides, part of a historic military complex that is the site of Napoleon’s tomb, and French tricolor flags were missing, according to Agence France-Presse.

Francois-Xavier Bellamy of the right-wing Republicans party tweeted those responsible were “ready to deny France, going so far as to distort reality to cancel its history.” Nicolas Meizonnet, a National Rally lawmaker, attributed the omissions to le wokisme or wokeism (via the BBC).

Gattoni told the BBC he’d hoped merely to create “a festive universe,” but, just as images from the Opening Ceremonies drew criticism, what’s festive to one person is “woke” to another.

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A far less controversial tchotchke presented to medal winners is the plush toy version of the Phryges, the official mascot inspired by Phrygian caps from the French liberation.

But the real keepsakes, of course, are the medals themselves and each carries a bit of one of the most iconic structures in the world. A fragment from the Eiffel Tower, preserved during 20th century renovations, is embedded in the Olympic and Paralympic medals, designed by Chaumet, the French jewelry house.

A 0.6-ounce piece of puddle iron, described by the tower’s website as “an almost pure form of iron with excess carbon removed through a process known as puddling,” is centered in each medal and shaped into a hexagon, a reference to the geometric shape of France.

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