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Feb. 8 (UPI) -- The Paris 2024 Organizing Committee on Thursday revealed the Olympic and Paralympic medals for the summer games, and they include a Parisian twist on tradition. The medals will be gold, silver and bronze keeping with tradition, but each of them will include original iron from the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of Paris.
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"What's impactful for this year will be having a part of the original Eiffel Tower metal, the iron, in these various medals, and so this is what we wanted to do, to infuse all these 2024 athletes with that metal," Paris 2024 Organizing Committee President Tony Estanguet said in a statement.
He added that Including the iron reflected a desire to make the medals "unique and singular."
Each medal includes the iron cut into a hexagon, but in the original color without the Eiffel Tower's brown paint.
The Olympic and Paralympic medals are struck rather than engraved.
Martin Fourcade, a five-time gold medal biathlete, said in a statement that the committee wanted similar medals for Olympians and Paralympians.
"There were three major inspirations behind this: the hexagon, the influence of France, and we also wanted the medal to be like a jewel -- and that's why it is set exactly like a precious stone," Fourcade said.
French athlete Beatrice Hess has won 20 gold medals at the Paralympic Games.
"As a French person, these medals represent pride, they also represent victory, but they also represent a jewel," she said in a statement. "I think they will be even more valuable to us if we win one on home soil."
Since the modern games began in Athens in 1896, approximately 36,600 medals have been awarded. The 2024 medals are unlike any of them.
The 5,084 Paris 2024 medals produced were created by jewelry maker Chaumet. They contain 529 grams of gold, 525 grams of silver and 455 grams of bronze in addition to the 18 grams of Eiffel Tower iron.
