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Team USA soccer player Lynn Williams accidentally created the “world’s most expensive coaster” when she brought her gold medal to a raucous postgame dance party at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Williams, 31, recently shared the story on TikTok about how she made it home in one piece from Paris, but her gold medal did not. The blue ribbon came to be separated from her medal during the team’s celebration of a 1-0 win over Brazil for its first Olympic gold medal since 2012.
“Anywho, thought it was finally time to tell you the long-awaited question, how did a I break my medal?” she said in the video. “How did I get the world’s most expensive coaster?”
Williams said the medal had a bar holding the ribbon in place, but it couldn’t withstand the postgame party.
“Obviously, you guys all saw me swinging the thing around,” she said.
She included a scene of her whipping the medal around by the ribbon like she was a competitor in the Olympic hammer throw.
Williams displayed the aftermath in a photo she shared in a series of shots she posted on Instagram on Aug. 11. She’s holding the medal in one hand, and the ribbon in the other.
“Ironically, that’s not how it broke,” she said on TikTok. “I’m sure it didn’t help, but that’s not how it broke.
“So I was swinging it around, it was on, it was fine, and then we were dancing.”
The medal couldn’t survive Williams’ dance moves.
“I had it on my shoulder like a little purse, and I was just jumping, dancing jumping, and I jumped down, and it just fell off,” she said. “So everybody was dancing, and I was roaming around trying to get my medal off the ground.”
The ribbon coming off wasn’t the only damage it sustained.
“It has a dent now, so it’s more — it’s definitely one of a kind,” she said. “And the little bar is gone, so I don’t know what happened. The bar got loose, and it fell out.
“Like I said, probably swinging it around didn’t help, but I just think that they should have made these better. They should have made them more sturdy, and honestly, I can’t be faulted for that.”
She said she didn’t know if she was going to get it fixed and is waiting to hear from the International Olympic Committee.
“They said I could probably get one,” she said. “I had to prove to them that it was in fact damaged. Now we’re just waiting to see.”
The IOC told TODAY.com earlier this month that it has a stockpile of extra medals that can be engraved as replacements if need be. The medal could also simply be repaired.
“If not, honestly I think it’s a cool, funny story,” Williams said.
“Best new coaster ever,” one TikTok commenter wrote.
Williams isn’t the only Olympian whose medal is in rough shape after Paris. Team USA’s Nyjah Huston, who won bronze in men’s street skateboarding, said on his Instagram story earlier this month that his medal was damaged following his win, according to Access Hollywood.
He also showed off chips in the surface in a close-up look at the medal.
“All right, so these Olympic medals look great when they’re brand new,” he said in a video. “But after letting it sit on my skin with some sweat for a little bit and then letting my friends wear it over the weekend, they’re apparently not as high quality as you would think. Look at that thing. It’s looking rough.”
British athlete Yasmin Harper also said that the bronze she won in women’s synchronized 3m springboard had “small bits of tarnishing,” according to the BBC.
“Paris 2024 is working closely with the Monnaie de Paris, the institution tasked with the production and quality control of the medals, and together with the national Olympic committee of the athlete concerned, in order to appraise the medal to understand the circumstances and cause of the damage,” organizers said in a statement to the BBC. “The medals are the most coveted objects of the Games and the most precious for the athletes. Damaged medals will be systematically replaced by the Monnaie de Paris and engraved in an identical way to the originals.”
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