There’s a problem with the Winter Olympics medals that means they keep breaking

Winter Olympic medallists need to be careful with how they celebrate their success at Milano Cortina as their medals keep breaking.

At least four medals have not remained in one piece during celebrations, with USA’s Breezy Johnson warning her fellow athletes: ‘Don’t jump in them.’

Johnson won gold in the women’s downhill skiing and was understandably thrilled with her success.

However, the medal couldn’t cope with her jumping for joy as it came away from the ribbon and she gave the no-jumping warning to silver medallist Emma Aicher.

She showed Aicher and reporters the separated medal, ribbon and pin supposed to be holding them together at a press conference.

‘I was jumping in excitement, and it broke,’ she said. ‘It came apart. I’m sure somebody will fix it. It’s not crazy broken, but it’s a little broken.’

Johnson is not the only medallist to be piecing her prize back together in Italy over the opening weekend of the Games.

US figure skater Alysa Liu posted a video on Instagram after the same thing happened to her team event gold medal.

‘My medal don’t need the ribbon,’ she captioned the clip after she topped the podium with her American teammates.

Justus Strelow was another athlete who saw his medal snap from the ribbon as he celebrated biathlon mixed relay bronze with his German teammates.

His medal fell to the floor amid celebrations, leaving him awkwardly scrambling to get it back onto the ribbon.

The German biathlon team wrote on the Instagram clip of the celebrations: ‘Hey Olympics, what’s up with those medals?

‘Are they not meant to be celebrated?’

https://www.instagram.com/p/DUgaHR5Ch3K/?hl=en

Women’s 10km + 10km skiathlon silver medallist Ebba Andersson saw her medal come apart as she ran in celebration with gold medallist Frida Karlsson.

‘That did not go completely according to plan. It’s in two pieces, with one of our coaches, right now,’ she said.

‘One of the three pieces that made up the medal fell off. After a lot of faffing about, we let that piece be. It was a small pin that secured the medal in its pendant.

‘I don’t know if the medal is made to hang around your neck when you’re running across half of the home straight, and also doing it at the speed of Frida Karlsson. I was a bit stupid trying to follow her.’

Winter Olympics chiefs have addressed the situation, with Andrea Francisi, the chief operations officer for the organising committee, saying: ‘We are aware of the situation, we have seen the images. Obviously, we are trying to understand in detail if there is a problem.

‘But obviously we are paying maximum attention to this matter, as the medal is the dream of the athletes, so we want that obviously in the moment they are given it that everything is absolutely perfect because we really consider it to be the most important moment. So we are working on it.’

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