Jacques van der Westhuyzen

By Jacques van der Westhuyzen

Head of Sport


Former SA Olympic champion Schoeman blasts Paris medals

The quality of the bronze medals in particular has come under scrutiny.


Former Olympic champion swimmer Roland Schoeman has blasted the Olympic committee for the alleged inferior quality medals handed out at the recent Paris Games.

Schoeman was reacting to a social media post made by American skateboarder Nyjah Huston who won a bronze medal at the recently concluded Paris 2024 Olympics.

Huston said the quality of the medals wasn’t great after just a week in possession of it.

“These Olympic medals look great when they’re brand new, but after letting it sit on my skin with some sweat for a little bit … they’re apparently not as high quality as you would think.”

There have been other social media posts, too, about the quality of the medals and earlier this week, Schoeman compared the quality of a few medals in a post on Facebook.

And he wrote: “Comparing @nyjah’s (Huston’s) 1-week old Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medal to @thebrenthayden’s (swimmer Brent Hayden’s) 12-year old London 2012 bronze medal to my 20-year old Athens 2004 bronze medal. This shouldn’t happen. This is embarrassing and needs to be addressed.”

Schoeman tagged the International Olympic Committee in his post.

See it here:

Schoeman competed in four Olympic Games, in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and won gold, silver and bronze at the 2004 Athens Games. He held numerous SA and world records during his swimming career and also won multiple world championships medals.

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