Organizers for the 2026 Winter Games said they are “working on” a solution.

Olympic athletes show off damaged medals days into event: ‘Don’t jump in them’

Organizers for the 2026 Winter Games said they are "working on" a solution.

By Shania Russell

Shania Russell

Shania Russell is a news writer at *, *with five years of experience. Her work has previously appeared in SlashFilm and Paste Magazine.

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February 9, 2026 12:34 p.m. ET

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Alysa Liu during the victory ceremony for the Figure Skating Team Event at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games on Feb. 8, 2026; Liu showing her medal on Instagram. Credit:

Jean Catuffe/Getty; Alysa Liu/Instagram

Winning big at the 2026 Winter Olympics is one half of the battle — getting that medal home in one piece is the other.

Days into the Milan Cortina Games, several athletes have revealed that their hard-earned medals have already broken, with some coming apart mere moments after being awarded. Breezy Johnson, who won gold in the women's downhill alpine skiing event on Sunday, made the mistake of jumping for joy while celebrating her big achievement. She later showed the audience at her post-event press conference that her gold medal had detached from its ribbon.

"So there's the medal. And there's the ribbon," she told reporters, holding up the two separated parts. "And here's the little piece that is supposed to go into the ribbon to hold the medal. And yeah, it came apart."

She even offered fellow medalists some advice, quipping, "Don’t jump in them. I was jumping in excitement, and it broke… It’s not crazy broken, but a little broken."

Johnson isn't the only athlete who suffered this fate. Also on Sunday, TV footage broadcast in Germany captured the moment biathlete Justus Strelow was dancing with his teammates, only to realize that the mixed relay bronze medal he just won had fallen off the ribbon around his neck. The video sees Strelow attempt to reattach the medal before realizing — like Johnson — that the small clasp connecting the medal to the ribbon had broken off as well.

Figure skater Alysa Liu endured a similar problem, as she revealed to followers on Instagram after the U.S. team won gold in the team figure skating event.

"My medal don’t need the ribbon," Liu captioned a video, in which she shows off her broken medal from all angles. "Proud of the team."

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Swedish cross-country skier Ebba Andersson, who won a silver medal from the women's skiathlon, said that her prized suffered an even more dramatic fate.

"The medal fell in the snow and broke in two," Andersson told Swedish broadcaster SVT, per Reuters. "Now I hope the organizers have a 'Plan B' for broken medals."

While athletes like Liu and Johnson are taking their broken hardware in stride, the Milano Cortina 2026 Chief Games Operations Officer Andrea Francisi has made it clear that officials are taking the issue very seriously.

"We are aware of the situation. We have seen the images. Obviously, we are trying to understand in detail if there is a problem," Francisi announced during a Monday press briefing. "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."

Gold medallist USA's Breezy Johnson shows her broken medal to the media at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 8, 2026.

Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty

This is not a new problem when it comes to Olympic medals. During a press conference on Feb. 8, skater Danny O’Shea said that his teammate Evan Bates — who previously won gold in Beijing — warned other skaters that the prizes can be fragile.

"Evan, before we all got out there, he’s like, 'Guys, be careful, they're real gold and they’re malleable, don’t be jumping around and hit it on things I dented mine right away. Be careful with it,'" O’Shea recalled.

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Along those lines, during the 2024 Games, several athletes complained about their damaged medals on social media. Skateboarder Nyjah Huston joked that his bronze medallion looked like it “went to war” after just a few weeks.

“They are apparently not as high quality as you would think,” Huston said that August. "I mean, look at that thing. It’s looking rough. Even the front is starting to chip off a little."

Six months after the games ended, more than 100 medalists said they had reached out to medal production company Monnaie de Paris to replace their medals, claiming they had begun to significantly "deteriorate." The French mint, which provided more than 5,000 medals for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, told PEOPLE that they were working with the 2024 Olympic Organizing Committee "to assess medal claims and understand the circumstances and cause of damage" to athletes' medals.

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