Rarely in the history of the Olympic Games has a single company been as ubiquitous as LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the luxury goods empire owned by France’s richest family.
As the largest corporate sponsor of the Paris Olympics, LVMH was everywhere. Moët & Chandon champagne flowed in the VIP suite. The French athletes wore clothing from the Berluti fashion house, part of LVMH. And, contrary to at least the spirit of the Olympic Charter, a Louis Vuitton bag was removed during the opening ceremony and exposed to the eyes of more than a billion people around the world.
But its most important role involved the Olympic medals designed by Chaumet, a manufacturer of fine jewelry and watches and part of the LVMH Group. Gold, silver and bronze medals will be taken home by the best athletes as souvenirs of their achievements at the Paris Games.
Now those medals are falling apart and LVMH has gone silent.
Just over 100 days since the Olympics ended, more than 100 athletes are seeking replacements for their crumbling medals. Last month, French swimmers Clement Secchi and Johan Ndoye Brouard showed off their falling medals on social media. “Crocodile skin,” Mr. Setch wrote.
American Olympic foil fencer Nick Itkin said his bronze medal started to deteriorate a few days after the Olympics. “But over the course of a few weeks or so, it became more noticeable,” he said, adding that he planned to ask for a replacement.
Medals had to be replaced at other Olympics, most notably Rio de Janeiro in 2016. But never before in the Olympics have companies stamped their brand credentials so prominently.
The problem appears to be most acute in the case of bronze medals, where athletes first started flagging as soon as they received their medals.
The International Olympic Committee apologized and said it would find a replacement. The French mint, Monnaie de Paris, which produced the medal, has so far blamed the problem on a technical problem related to the varnish.
And LVMH is happy to let other organizations talk. A company spokeswoman said LVMH would not comment because the company did not win the medal and is not responsible for it.
However, in the lead-up to the Games, and during the event itself, LVMH was showing off the role of its master craftsmen in the creation of its medals. On the second floor of the club founded by Chaumet, just meters from the Elysée Palace, the official residence of the French president, Chaumet designers proudly explain their year-long project to design the medal in secret. . In the center of each was a part of the Eiffel Tower.
Chaumet had never designed a sports medal before, but of the three medals he was asked to create, the bronze one was the most difficult.
“It’s the most difficult because it’s the most delicate,” Philippe Bergamini, one of Chaumet’s longest-serving jewelry designers, told The New York Times at the time.
The company tweaked the design hundreds of times before a special committee of athletes and Olympic officials agreed. The designers then collaborated with the Mint, a French institution that has produced coins and other valuable items since the Middle Ages.
Each medal took 15 days to complete, from die-cutting the design to dipping in gold, copper and silver, and finishing with a coat of varnish.
So when an athlete posted a photo of his bronze medal rusting last August, just weeks after the Games, the Mint launched an internal investigation to “understand the nature and cause of the damage,” the Mint said. said in a statement.
The Mint discovered that the varnish used to prevent oxidation was defective. The recipe for the varnish is a trade secret, but according to French industry group La L’Etre, it was made to comply with recent European Union regulations banning the use of chromium trioxide, a toxic chemical used to prevent metal from rusting. The coating was said to have weakened after changes made by the Mint. newspaper.
A spokesperson declined to confirm the report, but the Mint said in a statement that it had “modified the varnish and optimized the manufacturing process to make the medal more resistant to certain uses by athletes.”
Faced with a flood of deteriorating medals, the International Olympic Committee has vowed to find replacements. “The damaged medals will be systematically replaced by the Monnaie de Paris and engraved in the same way as the originals,” the organization said in a statement.
For LVMH, the Olympics were a coming out party. This was a major foray into the sports field, and an opportunity to promote the company in a way it had previously avoided in favor of showcasing individual brands.
Michael Payne, who devised the IOC’s unique marketing strategy, said: “This is a medal so it’s very high profile and everyone has questions about how this could happen, but especially the quality and accuracy. It’s from LVMH, which is significant.”
