Winter Olympic medals are breaking and going downhill fast

Two years ago, in Paris, it was the tarnishing. Now it’s the ribbons. No point denying it any longer: the Olympics have a massive medal problem on their hands.

As, indeed, does all of sport. Just as trophies (led by Formula One, but with tennis quite close behind) have evolved exponentially, supplanting the simple goblet or humble tea-tray of yore with vulgar chrome wheelie bins and unliftable frosted-glass mini-skips, so sports medals have gone bling-crazy too. Victory in even a marginal event these days is likely to see you served a gold slab the size of the hubcap off a lorry, for all the world as though Trump were running everything. Which I suppose he is.

Don’t just look at Breezy Johnson’s medal in that press conference where the skier so poignantly demonstrates its failings; listen to it, as she sets it down with a shuddering “clomp” on the desk. Hate to tut like a builder assessing the previous builder’s shortcomings, but you didn’t want to be using a basic suspension ring on a job like that. Asking for trouble, that was. That medal didn’t need a ribbon. It needed a dumbbell.

Incredible to note, but in 1966, England’s World Cup winners descended the Wembley steps clutching a dull red presentation box. Inside it was a shield-shaped trinket, no taller than their thumbs. No ribbon: there was no implication that anyone would wear this medal, or even see it. Indeed, I’m not sure I had ever set eyes on a 1966 medal until Alan Ball resold his in 2022.

It was, literally, a token of the occasion, as sports medals certainly should be, ripe for a drawer or, at a stretch, a shelf, and, as such, it wasn’t auditioning to decorate a horse at a royal wedding, the way they all do now.

True, a boxed medal wouldn’t suit today’s hyper-animated trophylifting scene – the group frug under exploding ticker-tape, the unison sprint-and slide to the goal-line, etc. Too cumbersome.

But it also wouldn’t suit the organisers, and their pressurised need to assert their event’s status. Whether it’s Fifa, the IOC or whoever, no sports body is going to hand out a medal in 2026 and not have the full extent of their largesse on display. That’s the point.

And that’s why we now see medals cracking under the strain – broken by the time the winners have finished jumping up and down in them.

There are two ways to rein this in. Either you blanket-legislate on surface area, thickness and weight, perform a thorough series of stress-tests for the suspension ring to establish a dependable industry standard, and ensure that no medal is unsustainable by its ribbon.

Or (and this may be more practical) you diversify. Frankly, that “bowing to be honoured” stuff doesn’t feel very now anyway, whether Gianni Infantino is the one doing the honouring or someone more morally acceptable. Maybe it’s time to think beyond the medal.

We admire the Super Bowl’s way of doing things – the ring. True, there are inherent risks with this, and presumably at least 85% of Super Bowl rings have, at some point in their lives, been left in a hotel soap dish. Nevertheless, it’s practical, it’s wearable, and it’s never falling off a ribbon.

So what about an Olympic ring? Appropriate, when you think about it. Or an FA Cup ring. Or perhaps a bracelet or, possibly for the Carabao Cup, a wrist-band, maybe cloth, like at festivals, or maybe rubber, like a fast-track pass for Alton Towers. In fact, with the Carabao, it could actually be a fast-track pass for Alton Towers, adding value.

In 1945, when Chelsea played Dynamo Moscow in a post-war exhibition match, each player went home with a commemorative silver cigarette lighter.

We’re by no means agitating for that, any more than we’re suggesting dishing out ashtrays, silver sugar tongs or a specially commissioned inglenook fireplace set.

But there was nothing wrong, in our opinion, with the old-style reward for endeavour in the swimming pool: a simple patch to be sewn to your trunks later.

Better than this current sport-wide madness. Clearly the ribbons aren’t having it any more.

And the ribbons are telling us something.

Photograph by Christian Petersen/Getty Images