Chinese Olympians claim their gold medals from Tokyo Olympics’ peeling’

Two Chinese Olympic champions claim that their gold medals from the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games are peeling.

Gymnast Zhu Xueying took to Chinese social media platform Weibo on Monday (Aug 23) to highlight that her gold medal was “peeling.”

“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.”

One Cherry Chen took to Twitter to share the incident and attached screenshots from Ms Zhu’s post.

Ms Zhu asked, “Can your medals…peel off too?” in the caption and included a photo of her medal with some discolouration on the top left area.

Members from the online community responded that the medals are not made of solid gold since the early 1900s, but gold plated.

Furthermore, others noted that the medals were made from recycled electronics.

In response to the alleged quality issue, the Organizing Committee of Tokyo Olympic Games informed the Global Times that only the coating applied to the medal’s surface had come off and not the gold plating.

“It does not affect the quality of the medal itself even if you remove the coating,” the committee added.

Ms Zhu won the women’s trampoline gymnastics event on Jul 30.

Another athlete, Wang Shun, who took home a swimming gold medal in the 200-metre individual medley, also mentioned to a reporter in a Weibo video that his medal was peeling, reported South China Morning Post.

The medals handed out during the Tokyo Olympics were made from smelted metal from electronic devices such as mobile phones donated by the public./TISG

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