Israeli Olympic bronze medalist Sagi Muki said over the weekend that he has returned his medal from the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics after it began peeling and losing its color.
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The Olympic Games in Tokyo were the most successful ever for an Israeli delegation. Half a year after the tremendous success, however, the former world champion judoka, who said he had barely touched the prized object, was forced to return the medal to even organizers after discovering that its color had started to peel.
"Apparently I got a faulty medal," Muki told Israel Hayom. "I didn't pour any water on it or anything that shouldn't be done, the color just started coming off over time. It was also in the box, well protected, and I almost never took it out," he said.
"I saw reports that I'm not the first person this has happened to, and I decided to check it out. I spoke to the Olympic Committee of Israel and they spoke to the Japanese, who asked that the medal be returned. They said they would fix it and will apparently repaint it," Muki added.
Q: Are you concerned you won't see the medal again?
"I gave them one of the most important things to me. I very much hope they won't disappoint me and make sure to keep the medal safe, even though they wrote in the e-mail that they aren't responsible for what happens – maybe as a waiver of liability – so I'm pretty much at their mercy."
Muki's case is not the first of its kind. Zhu Xueying, the Chinese gold medalist in the trampoline competition, made a similar claim about her medal. Xueying posted a photo of her medal to Chinese social media site Weibo.
In a message she wrote accompanying the photo, Xueying said: "Let me make something clear, I didn't intend to peel the medal, one day I just saw it. At first, I thought it was dirty, so I rubbed it with my finger and saw it did nothing. Only after I touched it again, more peeled off."
Olympic organizers in Tokyo rejected Xueying's claim that her medal was faulty, saying instead that what had peeled off was the protective substance applied over the real gold underneath.
"This substance is meant to prevent stains and scratches, and doesn't harm the quality of the medal," the organizers said in a message.
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