Why do Olympic medals keep breaking? Investigation underway at Winter Games as 4 athletes report problems with their prizes

Breaking news: It’s only the fourth day of the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, but at least four winning athletes have already seen their hard-earned medals snap, shatter or split — including Team USA’s first gold.

Alpine skier Breezy Johnson’s prize for edging Germany’s Emma Aicher by four hundredths of a second in the women’s downhill final on Sunday didn’t even survive the medal ceremony. Instead, it cracked into three pieces as she was celebrating.

“Well, I was jumping up and down in excitement, and it fell off,” Johnson told reporters as she displayed the remnants of her medal. “I think that’s maybe why it broke.”

“Don’t jump in them,” Johnson advised her fellow athletes.

Alysa Liu’s team-event gold suffered a similar fate, the U.S. figure skater revealed Sunday on Instagram.

“My medal don’t need the ribbon,” Liu wrote on a reel showing her team prize in one hand and its blue ribbon in the other.

What’s being done to fix the problem?

On Monday, Olympic organizers announced at a press conference that they are “fully aware of the situation” and investigating possible causes.

“We have seen the images,” Andrea Francisi, the chief games operations officer for the Milan Cortina organizing committee, told reporters. “We are paying maximum attention to this matter, as the medal is the dream of the athletes, so we want … the moment they are given it [to be] absolutely perfect, because we really consider it to be the most important moment. So we are working on it.”

To date, at least two European athletes have also broken their medals. In a moment captured on German TV that subsequently went viral, biathlete Justus Strelow suddenly realized as he danced with teammates that the mixed relay bronze he’d won on Sunday had detached from the ribbon around his neck and clattered to the floor.

Strelow tried to reattach the medal before realizing that a smaller piece — seemingly the clasp — had snapped off.

“Hey Olympics, what’s up with those medals?” read an Instagram post from the German biathlon team. “Are they not meant to be celebrated?”

Likewise, Swedish cross-country skier Ebba Andersson told a broadcaster in her home country that her women’s skiathlon silver “fell in the snow and broke in two.”

“Now I hope the organizers have a ‘Plan B’ for broken medals,” Andersson said.

A United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee spokesperson told BBC Sport that they are waiting for organizers to resolve the issue. It has “not yet been confirmed whether athletes will receive replacement medals,” BBC Sport reported.

What’s causing the medals to break?

The problem may stem from a flawed connection between the ribbon and the medal itself, according to Reuters. Citing a “source close to the situation,” the wire service reported that the medal’s “cord” is “fitted with a breakaway mechanism required by law,” which is “designed to release automatically if pulled with force, preventing the wearer from being choked.”

Olympic medals are redesigned for every winter and summer competition. This year’s edition is split into two inclined halves. One has a mirrored, ice-like surface; the other a frosty, granular texture. According to its creators, the design is a nod to the dual host cities, Milan and Cortina, that symbolizes the “union of two parts in constant motion.” Raffaella Paniè, director of identity for the competition, has also described the medal’s two halves as side-by-side tributes to the winning athlete and “all the teamwork that brought them” to the Games.

To hide the ribbon, the Milan Cortina medals also feature a “newly designed inlet” that prevents the fabric from “covering the face” of the prize, according to Reuters. This inlet is where the ribbon and the metal meet.

“So there’s the medal, and there’s the ribbon,” Johnson told reporters on Sunday. “And here’s the little piece that is supposed to go into the ribbon to hold the medal, and yeah, it came apart.”

Gold medals haven’t been made of solid 24-karat gold since 1912. But they’re still precious objects. Each gold medal (500 grams of sterling silver coated with 6 grams of pure gold) is worth roughly $2,400, according to the New York Times. Each silver medal (500 grams of sterling silver) is worth nearly $1,400. Those figures have more than doubled since the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris due to the soaring cost of gold and silver.

Has this ever happened before?

Yes. Just six months after the 2024 Paris Olympics, People reported that more than 100 medalists had already reached out to medal production company Monnaie de Paris to replace their prizes because they’d started to “deteriorate.” By February 2025, a total of 220 requests had been made to replace Paris 2024 medals — roughly 4% of those awarded.

At the time, American skateboarder Nyjah Huston joked that his bronze medal looked like it “went to war” after mixing with the sweat on his skin for a few weeks.

“They are apparently not as high quality as you would think,” Huston said. “I mean, look at that thing. It’s looking rough. Even the front is starting to chip off a little.”

The French mint said any damaged medals would be replaced and “identically engraved.”