French bronze medal-winning Olympic swimmer Yohann Ndoye-Brouard wondered over the weekend whether a medal he captured is from this summer or 100 years ago.
That's because the bronze he won in the 4x100-meter medley relay at the Paris 2024 Games seems to be deteriorating faster than a Léon Marchand lap.
He rhetorically questioned on social media whether his medal was from 2024 or 1924, with crying emojis.
Ndoye-Brouard is the latest Paris 2024 Olympian to gently complain that their prized mementos are losing their shine four months after the Games.
The French newspaper Le Méridional published a picture Saturday of the bronze won by Ndoye-Brouard 's 4x100 medley teammate Clement Secchi, whose medal also appeared to be quickly losing its luster.
The medal's rough edges made it look more like another water-loving creature, “Peau de crocodile,” according to Secchi.
U.S. rugby player and social media star Ilona Maher gave the world one of the first clues some medals could be less than Olympic quality when she appeared on NBC's "Late Night with Seth Meyers" on Aug. 12, shortly after closing ceremonies.
She whipped out the bronze that she and her teammates won in a stunning victory over powerhouse Australia.
"It's gorgeous, [but] it is wearing a little bit," Maher said, her right index finger swirling the edges of the medal. "It's a solid hunk of metal; it's a great piece of metal."
Representatives of the International Olympic Committee and Paris 2024 could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.
The medals awarded this summer each contain a small piece of iron from the famed Eiffel Tower, which has stood over three Olympics (1900, 1924 and 2024).
