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The Paris Olympics medals are made with pieces of the Eiffel Tower
PARIS | An Olympic medal inlaid with a piece of the Eiffel Tower. How’s that for a monumental prize?
A hexagonal, polished chunk of iron taken from the iconic landmark is being embedded in each gold, silver and bronze medal that will be hung around athletes’ necks at the July 26-Aug. 11 Paris Games and Paralympics that follow.
Games organizers revealed their revolutionary design on Thursday.
Simone Biles has seven medals from her two previous Olympics and LeBron James has two golds and one bronze from London, Beijing and Athens. But neither of those athletes who are targeting the Paris Games nor any of the roughly 36,600 other medalists at 29 previous Summer Olympics stretching back to 1896 ever owned one quite like these.
By making history at the Games, Paris medalists will take a bit of France and its history home, too.
Here’s a deep dive into the medals that are sure to wow:
ARE THESE REALLY EIFFEL TOWER CHUNKS?
Absolutely. The 330-meter (1,083-foot) tall tower is made of 18,038 iron parts. But it’s also getting a bit long in the tooth. Built for the 1889 World’s Fair — which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution — engineer Gustave Eiffel’s tower was only intended to stand for 20 years.
Instead, it just goes on and on — thanks to a bit of rejuvenating surgery from time to time and constant care. The 135-year-old tower is a veteran of two previous Games — in 1900 and 1924, the last held in Paris.
The iron pieces embedded in the center of the Olympic medals each weigh 18 grams (about two-thirds of an ounce).
They were cut from girders and other bits that were swapped out of the Eiffel Tower during renovations and stored for safekeeping, according to Joachim Roncin, head of design at the Paris Games organizing committee.
“The concept came after a few discussions. We realized that there’s one symbol known across the world, which is the Eiffel Tower,” Roncin said. “We said to ourselves, ‘Hey, what if we approached the Eiffel Tower Operating Co. to see if it’s possible to get a bit of the Eiffel Tower to integrate into the medal?’”
The company agreed, and “the dream became reality,” he said. “It’s really a bit of metal from the Eiffel Tower.”
HOW WERE THE CHUNKS PREPARED?
They were stripped of paint, polished and varnished for their second life.
They are stamped with “Paris 2024” and the Games logo — which looks like a flame or the face of a woman with a chic bob haircut. The five Olympic rings are also stamped on the iron of the Olympic medals. The Paralympic logo of three swooshes, known as the Agitos, is stamped on the medals for the Aug. 28-Sept. 8 Paralympics.
The iron pieces’ hexagonal form represents France. The French sometimes refer to their country as “L’Hexagone” — the hexagon — because of its shape.
Paris jewelry house Chaumet designed the medals. Six small clasps that hold the iron pieces in the medals are a wink at the 2.5 million rivets that bind the Eiffel Tower together.
Around the iron pieces are disks of gold, silver or bronze. They’re crinkled to reflect the light, making the medals shine. Games organizers say the metal is all recycled, not newly mined.
ARE PARIS’ MEDALS UNIQUE?
Yes. Olympic medals have tended to be quite sober. In what was a first, medals for the 2008 Beijing Olympics contained inlaid jade disks. But Paris is the only host city to include chunks of a famous monument.
“Having a gold medal is already something incredible. But we wanted to add this French touch and we thought that the Eiffel Tower would be this cherry on the top,” Roncin said.
“Having a piece of it is a piece of history.”
The ancient Greek goddess of victory, Nike, features on the Olympic medals’ other side — as she has done at every Games since 1928. But Paris has also added a small representation of the Eiffel Tower on that side, in another break with tradition.
The other side of the Paralympic medals shows a view of the tower as if looking upward from underneath. For visually impaired people, “Paris 2024” is written in Braille and the edges have notches: one for gold, two for silver, three for bronze.
BY THE NUMBERS
The Paris Mint is manufacturing 5,084 medals — about 2,600 for the Olympics and 2,400 for the Paralympics. That is likely more than will be required. Some will be stored in case that medals need to reassigned after the Games, which can happen when medal-winners are subsequently stripped of the prizes for doping. Some go to museums. Any other spares could be destroyed.
The gold medals weigh 529 grams and are not pure gold. They are made of silver and plated with 6 grams of gold.
The silvers weigh 525 grams.
The bronzes weigh 455 grams and are a copper, tin and zinc alloy.
The medals are 85 millimeters across and 9.2 millimeters thick.
They’ll come in a dark-blue box from Chaumet and a certificate from the Eiffel Tower Operating Co. that the iron pieces came from the monument. Paris organizers didn’t give a monetary value for the medals.
NASCAR names Eric Peterson president
of Iowa Speedway
NEWTON, Iowa | Eric Peterson has been named president of Iowa Speedway as the track prepares for its first NASCAR Cup Series in June, NASCAR announced Thursday.
Peterson, who replaced David Hyatt, has been NASCAR’s West Region senior director for corporate sales and has held various sales roles since joining International Speedway Corporation and Kansas Speedway in 2010.
“Eric has a strong Midwest work ethic and an incredible passion for our sport,” said Chip Wile, NASCAR senior vice president and chief track properties officer. “He also has a proven track record of developing relationships with major national and local brands, making him the ideal choice to lead the top professional sports venue in the state of Iowa.”
The ARCA Menards Series opens the Cup Series weekend on June 14 and will be followed by the NASCAR Xfinity Series race June 15. The Iowa Corn 350 is June 16.
“I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work on several initiatives at Iowa Speedway in recent years, and I’ve come to love and appreciate what Iowa Speedway means to Newton and the entire state,” Peterson said.
Iowa Speedway is about 30 miles east of Des Moines.
Former Olympian pleads guilty to molesting boys
BOSTON | A former Olympian and longtime track coach will spend as many as 11 years in state prison after pleading guilty to charges of sexually molesting young boys at a sports camp in western Massachusetts in the 1970s, abuse that was laid bare by the emotional testimony of several victims.
Conrad Mainwaring, who was a hurdler for Antigua and Barbuda in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, faced 12 counts of indecent assault and battery on a child over 14 and four counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 in Berkshire Superior Court. The charges involved nine male victims.
“He used his Olympic status to abuse young boys,” District Attorney Timothy Shugrue told the court. “He chose young, attractive, athletic boys, young men because he knew, at least he thought he knew, they would not speak up. This was his opportunity for self-gratification, a fraud at the expense of many, many lives.”
In a pattern that repeated itself over the years, Shugrue detailed case after case in which Mainwaring leveraged his Olympic credentials as part of a grooming technique used on boys attending Camp Greylock, making the youngsters believe that the sexual assault would make them better athletes. The abuse took place in the woods around the camp, in a van and near a tennis court among other places.
After details of the cases were presented, Mainwaring, in a wheelchair and wearing a mask, said “yes” when asked by the judge if he committed the offenses laid out in court. He then said “guilty” after each of the charges was read out.
Mainwaring, a 72-year-old Los Angeles resident and United Kingdom national, will serve his sentences on the multiple charges concurrently. But Judge John Agostini said it was “probably a life sentence” given Mainwaring’s age.
Mainwaring molested campers from 1975 to 1979 while working as a counselor at Camp Greylock in Becket. Authorities have said they believe there are “many other victims” in several states and outside the United States.
Some of the camp victims — who were as young as 13 and as old as 19 — testified at Thursday’s hearing, recalling the shame and the damage the abuse has caused them. Addressing Mainwaring directly, they called him a danger to young men. They demanded a long jail sentence, arguing that he be kept away from boys or young men and barred from coaching.
“It’s beyond diabolical, the pain and suffering of so many. It’s why he must be put behind bars and be prevented from ever harming anyone again,” John Shapiro, an entrepreneur and father of three, who told the court how he was abused at the Massachusetts camp and Syracuse University, “Because given the chance he will. He has shown no signs of remorse or forgiveness. None. Again, given the chance, Mr. Mainwaring will do this again.”
Shapiro also detailed the toll the abuse has taken on his life.
“The trauma from that has caused my life to be full of darkness, sadness and devoid of hope. I’ve suffered so much for so many years,” Shapiro said. “Too painful to describe and too tortuous to put into words, but I’m making an attempt here and now. My life has never been the same since that first fateful time he sexually abused me at Greylock.”
Michael Waxman detailed how he met Mainwaring 40 years ago at the camp when he was 13. Waxman, an attorney from Portland, Maine, told the court that at the time he was “overjoyed” that Mainwaring had picked him and would have followed him to “the ends of the earth” to see the dream of becoming a top athlete.
“What you did to me had nothing to do with my dream,” he said, confronting Mainwaring for the first time in decades. “It was all about satisfying your perverted sexual needs.”
Waxman said the abuse left him ashamed and disgusted “for the first time in my life.”
“You stole part of my childhood, part of my innocence and frivolity,” he said. “Conrad, I really was a good kid. I didn’t deserve to feel shame. I didn’t deserve to feel disgusted with myself. You did and you do. Shame on you.”
As victims read their statements, Mainwaring mostly stared at the ground or twiddled his thumbs. He said nothing directly to the victims.
Massachusetts authorities started investigating Mainwaring following a 2019 ESPN report in which more than 50 men alleged they were abused by him, some of them at Camp Greylock. He was arrested in 2021 on a fugitive warrant as he left a Los Angeles County courthouse after a plea in a separate case from 2019.
Mainwaring also is accused in several lawsuits of abusing dozens of young men when he was a doctoral student, a deputy residency hall director and track and field coach at Syracuse University in the 1980s. A spokesperson for Syracuse declined to comment, saying the school doesn’t “comment on pending/ongoing litigation.”
“Everyone who brought Conrad Mainwaring to justice deserves our thanks, including law enforcement, the district attorney, the journalists at ESPN, and especially the courageous men who shared their stories deserve the most gratitude,” said Saul Wolf, an attorney whose firm represents seven victims and filed lawsuits against Syracuse University in New York, the Syracuse school district and the Massachusetts camp.
“Now that Mainwaring intends to enter a guilty plea and take responsibility, it is time for Syracuse University and Camp Greylock to accept responsibility and be held accountable,” he added.
Baylor hiring former TCU coach Gary Patterson as senior consultant
Baylor is hiring former TCU coach Gary Patterson as a senior consultant to head coach Dave Aranda, a person with direct knowledge of the move told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal was being finalized. The 63-year-old Patterson was coach at TCU for 22 years before being pushed out during the 2021 season. He went 181-79 while leading the Horned Frogs — the winningest coach in program history. Baylor is coming off a 3-9 season that has raised the pressure on Aranda, who is entering his fifth year as the Bears coach.
Baylor is hiring former TCU coach Gary Patterson as a senior consultant to head coach Dave Aranda, a person with direct knowledge of the move told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal was being finalized.
The website SicEm365 first reported Baylor was hiring Patterson.
Patterson, 63, was coach at TCU, maybe Baylor’s biggest Big 12 rival, for 22 years before being pushed out during the 2021 season. He went 181-79 while leading the Horned Frogs — the winningest coach in program history.
Patterson spent the 2022 season in an off-field role at Texas as a special assistant to the head coach.
Baylor is coming off a 3-9 season, raising the pressure on Aranda. He’s entering his fifth year as coach of the Bears. After winning the Big 12 in their second season under Aranda in 2021, the Bears have gone 8-16.
Rays extend contracts of Kevin Cash, Erik Neander
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. | The Tampa Bay Rays have extended the contracts of manager Kevin Cash and president of baseball operations Erik Neander.
The team announced the moves Thursday but did not specify the length of the agreements.
Cash, 46, has led the Rays to the playoffs each of the past five seasons and reached the World Series in 2020 before losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The two-time AL Manager of the Year replaced Joe Maddon in 2015 and has a 739-617 record over nine seasons.
Cash was entering the final guaranteed season of his previous agreement, which included a 2025 club option.
Neander, 40, joined the Rays in 2007, was promoted to general manager in 2016 and took on the title of president of baseball operations five years later.
“I believe there are none better in baseball,” principal owner Stuart Sternberg said in a statement. “What we’ve all accomplished together has been remarkable, and the best is yet to come.”
—From AP reports
