CHINESE athlete, Zhu Xueying, who earned gold in trampoline gymnastics at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, took to social media site, Sina Weibo, with photos of her gold medal peeling off on the upper left-hand side.
"Let me clarify this… I didn't mean to peel the thing off at first, I just discovered that there was a small mark on my medal," Xueying wrote on the social media post, per the Global Times.
"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."
A rebuttal to the “quality” issue was offered by the organising committee of the Tokyo Olympic Games, telling the Global Times that the material that came off the gymnast's medal was not the actual gold plating, but an exterior coating intended to protect it from stains and scratches, which “does not affect the quality of the medal itself".
Compared to the Jade-inlaid medals from the 2008 Beijing Games, medals awarded during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics contained metal from recycled electronic devices donated by the Japanese people.
If Xueying wanted a replacement medal, she could get one for a fee as the International Olympics Committee (IOC) retains the molds of all the Games’ medal designs. This came in handy when Japanese mayor, Takashi Kawamura, offered to replace the gold medal belonging to softball pitcher, Miu Goto, after receiving over 8,000 complaints for biting into it earlier this month.
Although the Global Times reported that the medal maker for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, Japan Mint, has yet to find any problems with gold-medal peeling, it said that an investigation into the matter may be initiated by the Tokyo Olympic Games organising committee. – Agencies, August 26, 2021
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