Olympic gold medals are peeling weeks after Tokyo Games, says Chinese athlete

Olympians from the Tokyo 2020 Games have claimed that their medals are beginning to peel, just weeks after they were won.

The organisers went to great efforts to take an innovative and environmentally friendly approach to the Games, including by making the gold, silver and bronze medals from recycled electronics metal.

But, despite best intentions, it appears to have backfired. China's Zhu Xueying, who won gold in the women's trampoline gymnastics, posted photos to social media of her medal which had visible damage to its upper left-hand corner.

“Can your medals … peel off too?” Zhu wrote in the caption on Chinese social media website Sina Weibo, referencing the dark patch on the gold plating. She garnered thousands of comments from followers, before adding: "Let me clarify this… I didn't mean to peel the thing off at first, I just discovered that there was a small mark (like pic one) on my medal," she wrote.

"I thought that it was probably just dirt, so I rubbed it with my finger and found that nothing changed, so then I picked at it and the mark got bigger." Her compatriot, swimmer Wang Shun, also reportedly said his gold medal was peeling.

The Tokyo Olympic Games' Organising Committee told the Global Times, a Chinese communist tabloid, that the peeling material on the medal was not the gold plating but a protective coating which stops it from picking up scratches. “Even if you remove the coating, it does not directly affect the medals’ quality," the statement added.

The medals were all created from old electronics, including mobiles phones and other appliances that Japan's general public donated. Over a two year process from 2017 to 2019, organisers collected 78,985 tons' worth of appliances, then smelting down the metal before moulding the medals.

Olympic medals can be replaced, as there have been cases of athletes losing their most prized possession in the past. The International Olympic Committee makes sure to keep a mould of each medal design from every Games and, for a fee, athletes can have their prize replaced. However usually that is because of a genuine loss of a medal, rather than damage.