The evolution of Olympic medal design over the years

From crowns woven of olive leaves to those made of solid gold, Olympians have been rewarded in a variety of ways

The Paris 2024 Olympic gold medal by Chaumet. Photo: LVMH Instagram

The very idea that Olympic winners are rewarded with a gold, silver or bronze medal is a relatively modern concept. As we near the end of the 329 medal events at the Paris Olympics, we thought we'd look at the style and design history of those medals.

In Ancient Greece – where the Olympic Games originated – the event were held every four years for almost 1,200 years in Olympia before being banned in 393AD by Emperor Theodosius I. The all-male spectacle awarded the winner of each event (and it was only the winner, there were no runners-up) with a crown woven from olive leaves. While it may seem sparse by today's standards, the wreath gave the winner a bounty of respect and social currency.

When the Games were resurrected centuries later in Athens in 1896, part of that tradition survived with the winner being handed a silver plaque, a diploma and an olive branch. The second-placed athlete was given a bronze or copper medal, a diploma and a branch of laurel. It was only at the 1904 St Louis games that the concept of first, second and third was introduced. In what must have been a compelling incentive to win, the first-place medal was made of solid gold.

Sadly for later Olympians, this soon proved too costly to continue and it was at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics that the last solid gold medallion was presented. Today, the top medal is gold-plated silver, coated in 6g of gold.

Summer Games

In 1928, a unifying official design was picked to adorn the front of every medal. It showed Nike, the Ancient Greek goddess of victory, depicted with her wings outstretched and holding a winner’s crown in her right hand and a palm in her left. Created by Florentine artist Giuseppe Cassioli, the design remained unchanged until 1968, which explains why the medals at the Games on either side of the Second World War are markedly similar, despite being held in Nazi Germany in Berlin in 1936 and London in 1948.

Content to stay with tradition, medals at the Summer Games have continued without huge variations, with the first real design departure arriving in 1972 in Munich, when the reverse side of the medal showed Castor and Pollux, the sons of Zeus and Leda – and patrons of sports competitions and friendship – as two naked youths.

More recently the reverse side of the medal has featured an array of designs, from a loose sketch of a person jumping (Barcelona 1992), to a peace dove (Seoul 1988), to an Olympic flame for the Moscow 1980 Games, culminating in the 2024 design by Chaumet of an engraved starburst surrounding a slice of the Eiffel Tower.

Winter Games

The Winter Olympics, meanwhile – which were held the same year as the Summer Games until 1992 – seem to have had greater artistic freedom with medal designs. This was first apparent at the 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Games that broke with tradition by reducing the image of Nike to a small engraving of her riding her chariot. It would prove to be the last time she was depicted on the Winter Games medals.

By 1948 in St Moritz – having been delayed by the Second World War – the only reference to the Ancient Greeks was not a god, but a hand holding the Olympic torch to symbolise the rituals of the original event. Freed from the constraint of a formal design, winter medals have gone to town since, as highlighted by the 1972 Sapporo medal that was reduced to a minimalist design of a circle within a plump square, bisected by a curving line.

The famous five interlocking Olympic rings, meanwhile, appeared for the 1928 St Moritz Games.

The 1992 event in Albertville, France, were the first and last time the Olympic rings were used on both sides of medals. Handmade out of glass set with gold, silver or bronze, these Lalique medals are perhaps the most technically complex ever made and required a team of 35 people working hundreds of hours to create the 330 finished pieces needed for all of the sports.

Round v square

Finally, while round is the standard shape for medals, neither the Summer nor Winter Olympics organisers have felt compelled to stick with that.

Four Winter Games features different shapes, including the hexagon chosen for the Salt Lake City Games in 2002 and the brutalist square at 1984 in Sarajevo. The Sapporo Games in 1972 featured a softer, plumper square, while at the 2006 Turin Games each medal was doughnut-shaped, with a central hole. Only the 1900 Paris Summer Olympics has broken with convention when rectangular medals were handed out.