Alysa Liu, Breezy Johnson Receive New Gold Medals After Theirs Broke in Celebration

Don’t jump up and down with your Olympic medal on, some Olympians have learned in Milan Cortina.

Figure skater Alysa Liu’s gold medal broke when she was jumping up and down in celebration. | Andy Cheung/Getty Images

A couple Olympians in Milan Cortina learned to not jump up and down with your gold medal—there’s a good chance it’ll break.

Team USA figure skater Alysa Liu’s gold medal from the team event broke while she was celebrating the win. She admitted to jumping up and down with the medal on, as one does when they’re excited, and then the medal detached from the ribbon and dented.

Liu told Overtime in an interview that the Olympics required her to get a whole new gold medal instead of fixing her original one. She was a bit sad about not being able to keep the original medal, but understood.

“I was just jumping up and down, as one does to celebrate, and it just dropped. It just literally fell off of the ribbon. It got very scratched up, well not very dented but pretty dented. I actually liked it when it was off the ribbon, but that’s not allowed. I had to give it in. I was like, ‘Can’t you just fix this one?’ I’m attached. But it’s O.K., I’m detached. Just like it was.”

Team USA skier Breezy Johnson also broke her gold medal that she won from the women’s downhill final over the weekend. Johnson’s seemingly broke right after she got it, as she displayed the gold medal without the ribbon during her post-ceremony press conference.

“Do not jump in them. I was jumping in excitement and it broke,” Johnson said. “So there’s the medal, there’s the ribbon, and here’s the little piece that is supposed to go into the ribbon to hold the medal. Yeah, it came apart.”

The German biathlon team were seen celebrating their bronze win by jumping up and down, and one athlete’s medal detached from his ribbon, too.

As this medal issue is becoming a bigger thing in the first week of the Olympics, Milan Cortina’s chief games operations officer Andrea Francisi released a statement on Monday saying that they are looking into why the medals keep detaching from the ribbons.

“We’re going to pay particular attention to the medals and obviously this is something that [we want] everything [to] be perfect when the medal is handed over, because this is probably one of the most important moments for the athletes,” Francisi said. “So we’re working on it.”

We’ll see if any more Olympians end up with a broken medal. At least the Games are replacing any broken medals.

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