Olympic gold medals aren't exactly gold

NBC

Hundreds of gold medals will be awarded during the Paris Olympics and Paralympics to the highest-performing athletes in the world in their respective sports.

The medals for the 2024 Paris Games will feature a unique addition: a piece of iron from the original Eiffel Tower will be embedded in them. The medals will also be delivered in Louis Vuitton boxes, as the luxury brand is based in Paris.

While that will be unique, there will be something that is missing.

According to Rohit Pandey, assistant professor in the Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering at Viriginia Tech, none of them will actually be solid gold.

"It turns out that gold medal is pretty much a silver medal with a gold plating on top," Pandey said. "It's not common knowledge, but there's only six grams of gold in a gold medal that weighs about 500 grams or about a pound. It's not a solid gold piece. The gold medals are about 92.5% silver."

Pandey has dedicated much of his life to his craft. Prior to academia, Rohit worked as an engineer in the mining industry for Nevada Gold Mines, a major gold producer, and Peabody Energy, a major coal producer.

At Virginia Tech, Rohit teaches several technical courses on Mining Engineering and does active research in the broad areas of mining and geo-energy engineering. The mining school at Virginia Tech, where he currently works, is just one of 13 mining engineering departments in the country. There are several reasons for this, but one of the biggest is the cost.

"If you go back to the first Olympics in Athens back in 1896, they only had two medals. The first place and the second place, where the first place was given a silver medal and second place was actually given bronze," Pandey said.

"It would eventually, of course, change, and first place would get the gold, second would get silver, and third would get bronze, as we know it today. So now, just think about it. The price of gold has been teetering on record highs these days. They are over $2400 for an ounce of gold, which is about 28 or so grams. So now if the Olympic Committee were to make all gold medals in pure gold, each medal would cost about $40,000."

He said if you do that math, in one Olympic and Paralympic year, the Olympic Committee could be shelling out more than $80 million just on gold medals! It's more than just the costs, though. Pandey said it's also about being environmentally conscious, as the Paris Olympics is touting itself as one of the greenest Olympics on record.

"Modern mining is a complex and high-tech engineering feat that integrates environmental, social, legal, economic, and ethical factors to provide materials needed for everyday life, as well as materials for sporting equipment and even Olympic medals. Precious metals, like gold and silver, start as ores in the ground, and mining engineers develop solutions to extract these in a way that is efficient, safe, and environmentally responsible." It comes down to economics, and the economics boils down to mining because, at the end of the day, all these metals and minerals come from the ground, and it is just exponentially harder. It is getting exponentially rare in order to find gold in nature. Like in the earth's crust compared to silver, and it is harder to mine as well," Pandey said.

He said that silver is about 20 times more abundant in the earth's crust, proving the reason gold is so much more expensive than silver.

"Even more perspective here. Take the world population of about eight billion people. Then take Hamilton County, Texas, a population of 16,500 people, and they are wearing a blue hat and a blue shirt. The chances of you finding one of them are pretty low. That's the same type of challenge we face when mining certain minerals," Pandey said.

Pandey went on to say it isn't just hard to mine the resources; the process of even getting permitted to do so could take 10 to 15 years to complete.

"The process is really intense and now you can see why gold medals couldn't be solid gold. It would almost be impossible and way too expensive," Pandey said.

According to Paris Olympic organizers, 5,084 medals are ready for the winning athletes. The medals are a little more than three inches in diameter and about 1.3 inches thick. The gold and silver medals weigh a little more than a pound, and the bronze medals weigh a little less than a pound.

NBC 5 is your Olympic station with the Opening Ceremony beginning on July 26. You can also read and watch our stories of North Texas Hometown Hopefuls hoping to shine on the Olympic stage this summer.