What’s in the Mystery Box Olympians Get When They Medal? Here’s Your Answer
If you've been watching the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, you've probably noticed something peculiar about the medal ceremonies. As the athletes receive their winning gold, silver, or bronze, they're also handed a long, narrow box. If that made you curious, you're not alone—social media has been abuzz with people asking perhaps the most important question of the Olympics thus far: What's in the box?
Thankfully, we have an answer.
It's an official poster for the event, according to the official Olympics website. The poster, designed by French artist Ugo Gattoni, details a “utopian, fantasy version of Paris” where “sport is everywhere in the city, and the influence of the Art Deco movement is never far away, creating bridges between past and present, between the Paris of the Games of 1900, that of the Games of 1924, and that a hundred years later, of the Games in 2024,” according to the Olympics website.
“It's a new, key moment in the Paris 2024 story. We've tried to be different and imagine posters that look like us, posters that go beyond a mere logo,” Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet said during an event when the poster was revealed in March.
Gattoni spent a total of 2,000 hours working on the poster between September 2023 and January 2024.
Here's a closer look at Gattoni's work:
The poster isn't the only thing given to athletes who medal (the medals, btw, all contain a piece of iron from the Eiffel tower). They receive a stuffed version of the Olympics mascot, Phryge, with either a gold, silver, or bronze emblem sewn onto it. (Phryge takes its name from a Phrygian cap—or liberty cap—that French revolutionaries wore when they stormed the Bastille prison in 1789, according to NBC News. Since then, the cap has been a symbol of freedom.)
Team USA athletes who medal also receive $37,500 for gold, $22,500 for silver, and $15,000 for bronze, according to USA Today.
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