What about the spirit of Japanese craftsmanship? Olympic medal production should be on par with Chinese gold-encrusted jade
One Olympic cycle, four winters, summers, spring and autumn, athletes have to pay extremely amazing cruel youth, and ten thousand luck to win Olympic medals. This is the highest level of praise for their dedication and a testament to the memories of their lives. For such an important, ritualistic object, there is a low-level "quality" problem? This is really unacceptable.
Written by 丨 Horsen
Editor丨 Feng Xiao
Recently, mainland canoeist Zheng Pengfei posted on social media, saying that the silver medal he won at the Tokyo Olympics two years ago has been severely oxidized. Judging from the photos of the medals he posted, the silver part of the silver medal oxidized very obviously, as if it was rusted. This caused heated discussions among netizens.
01 Are the Tokyo Olympics medals flawed?
Winning a medal at the Olympics and standing on the podium in the spotlight is the ultimate dream of almost every athlete, and the medal that carries this dream and glory is extremely commemorative.
But now, this one-of-a-kind souvenir has suddenly appeared flawed, which of course will make people feel uncomfortable and difficult to accept.
However, Zheng Pengfei does not need to be so angry, because in the real world, it is normal for Olympic medals to have similar flaws.
Also the Tokyo Olympic medalist, trampoline player Zhu Xueying's gold medal has been "peeling" in less than two months, and this is not an isolated case, swimming champion Wang Shun and gymnastics champion Zou Jingyuan also revealed in interviews that the gold medals they won also have "peeling" phenomenon.
Although the reporter later interviewed the Japanese Mint, which was responsible for making the gold medal, they explained that the peeling skin was only a coating added to prevent the gold medal from being defaced, not the gold plating, and did not affect the value of the gold medal itself.
And since it is a coating, then naturally sooner or later there will be a day when it will fall off, but anyway, the shelf life of this coating is really too short ...
The Japanese often pride themselves on their craftsmanship, but it is disappointing that they have produced medals of such quality at the Olympics held in their home country.
02 Medals for scrap manufacturing?
In addition to the anger and disappointment of the Zheng Pengfei player, there is also this sentence in the message - "Time proves that this is made of scrap", what is going on?
It turned out that the main theme of the Tokyo Olympics was environmental protection, and in order to meet this theme, all the medals at the Tokyo Olympics were made from waste products.
But there is a little common sense that needs to be popularized to everyone is that the circuit boards of various electrical appliances used in our daily life contain certain precious metals, according to authoritative data, each ton of garbage circuit boards can be refined 0.4-0.7 kg of gold, 1.0-1.5 kg of silver and 120-130 kg of copper.
The Tokyo Organizing Committee spent two years extracting 30.3 kilograms of gold, 4,100 kilograms of silver and 2,700 kilograms of brass from 80,000 tons of waste electronic products donated by the Japanese people and 6.2 million used mobile phones provided by sponsors, and then used these refined precious metals to create gold medals, rather than the simple "use of waste products to make medals" as some imagined.
Japan is a big country for e-waste
From this point of view, "medals made of waste products" are actually very good environmental protection concepts, even Zhu Xueying, who suffered from the "peeling" of medals, also expressed great praise after learning this.
Of course, environmental protection is one thing, poor medal quality is another, and there is no necessary causal relationship between the two.
03 Is it common to have problems with Olympic medals?
The fact that Olympic medals are flawed is not really big news, but it is very common.
After all, the precious metal content of the Olympic medals, the specifications of which have been determined by the International Olympic Committee, and no one will cut corners on this - but in the later processing technology, it can still be saved.
Two years ago, when Zhu Xueying posted on social media wondering why her gold medal was peeling, Xu Jiali, a gold medalist in sailing at the London Olympics, also posted photos of her gold medal, saying that she was even worse, and the gold medals were completely discolored, covered with turquoise rust.
Xu Jiali had to professionally restore her beloved Olympic gold medal
The same medalist at the London Olympics, Brazil's wrestler Taki, accidentally fell while taking a shower, and the result was outrageous - the bronze medal he was carrying with him was directly deformed, so much so that the Olympic organizing committee had to make up another piece for him.
But the Brazilians' own Rio Olympics are even more outrageous, and a few years after the end of the Olympics, some athletes have revealed that their medals have serious rust problems, and at first the Brazilian Olympic Organizing Committee claimed that it was caused by the improper storage of the athletes themselves, but as more and more players appealed, the Brazilian Olympic Organizing Committee had to agree to recycle these flawed medals and make a new one - guess what? Of the more than 2,000 medals issued, more than 130 were so defective that they needed to be recovered.
The medals at the Rio Olympics are similarly civilized for their poor quality
04 Are there flawless Olympic medals?
Therefore, it is normal for Olympic medals to have some flaws, but there is indeed a leading iron organizer in the history of the Olympic Games, and it is hard to make a flawless medal.
Remember the aforementioned Xu Jiali posted her rusty London Olympic gold medal? Next to that gold medal, there was a flawless bronze medal with almost no defilement, so that the contrast was really eye-catching.
The bronze medal is quite chic, and there is a round of green jade ring on the front of the medal, which is very beautiful - yes, this is our medal from the Beijing Olympics.
Most Olympic medalists take care to keep their medals, and it's hard to stain them, but once, the Beijing Olympics rhythmic gymnastics champion, Russian athlete Shukurichhna's apartment broke out in a fire, and the belongings in the home were almost burned, but the gold medal she won at the Beijing Olympics was intact in the fire - not even the ribbon was damaged, and it was basically the same as brand new after washing it with water.
Such a comparison makes it seem that other previous Olympic organizing committees are a little embarrassed.
Then everyone checked it, only to know that when you won the Olympic medal, you will also get a medal storage instruction manual, most of which will indicate: can not be bumped, worn, can not be placed in a wet place, can not touch water, must be wiped with a dry and clean cloth, on weekdays with the box is the best to preserve.
But the instruction manual for the preservation of the medals of the Beijing Olympics reads like this -
This product uses aerospace nanotechnology, because of the special material, can withstand 5000 uninterrupted pulls, can be waterproof, fireproof, foul-proof, mothproof, and will never fade.
It should be said that in one Olympic cycle, four winters, summers, spring and autumn, athletes have to pay extremely amazing cruel youth, and ten thousand points of luck to win Olympic medals. This is the highest level of praise for their dedication and a testament to the memories of their lives. It is unacceptable that such an important, ritualistic object has a low-level "quality" problem.
And only the quality of gold inlaid jade is worthy of the name of Olympic medals. Only countries that achieve this level of quality are qualified Olympic hosts.