Olympic medals from the Paris Games are separated. LVMH remained silent.

Rarely in the history of the Olympics has a single company dominated 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 is everywhere. Moët & Chandon champagne was flowing in the VIP suite. The French athletes were dressed by LVMH’s Berluti fashion house. And, contrary to the spirit of the Olympic charter, the Louis Vuitton goods were removed during the opening ceremony and seen by more than one billion people worldwide.

But its most important role is the Olympic medal, which was designed by Chaumet, a jewelry and watch manufacturer and part of the LVMH group. Gold, silver and bronze – the best athletes will take them home as a reminder of their achievements at the Paris Games.

Now those medals have been destroyed — and LVMH has gone silent.

In just over 100 days after the Olympics closed, more than 100 athletes have applied to replace their broken medals. Last month, French swimmers Clement Secchi and Yohann Ndoye-Brouard showed off their shiny medals on social media. “Crocodile skin,” Mr. Secchi wrote. And a few weeks after the Games ended, American Olympic foil fencer Nick Itkin posted a video on Instagram about his bronze medal losing its luster.

The medal has had to be replaced at other Olympics — most notably in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. But no company has trademarked its trademark at a previous Olympics.

The problem seems to be the most obscure with the bronze medal, a problem that the first athlete begins to notice shortly after winning it.

The International Olympic Committee apologized and said it would find a replacement. The Monnaie de Paris, the French mint that issued the medals, has taken responsibility so far, blaming the problem on technical problems with the varnish.

And LVMH is happy to let other organizations talk. A spokesperson for this company said that LVMH did not make the medal and is not responsible for it.

But in the build-up to the games, and during the event itself, LVMH demonstrated the role of expert artisans in the design of the medals. On the second floor of the club they created, just a few meters from the Élysée Palace, the residence of the French president, the designers from Chaumet proudly explained the year-long project to design the medals in secret. In the heart of each was a part of the Eiffel Tower.

Chaumet had never designed a sports medal, and of the three he was commissioned to make, the bronze 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 changed the plan hundreds of times until a special committee of athletes and Olympic officials agreed. The inventor then joined the mint, a French company that produced coins and other valuables since the Middle Ages.

Each medal took 15 days to complete, from pressing the design to pouring it in gold, bronze and silver and then finishing it with a coat of varnish.

So when an athlete posted a photo of a fallen bronze medal last August, a few weeks after the Games, the mint launched an internal investigation to “understand the circumstances and the cause of the damage.” ”, said the organization.

The mint found that the varnish used to prevent oxidation was flawed. The varnish’s manufacturing process is a trade secret, but the coating has been reduced after the mint changed it to comply with recent European Union legislation banning the use of chromium trioxide, a toxic chemical used to prevent metals from rusting. according to La Lettre, a French company. newspaper.

A spokesman declined to confirm the report, but said in a statement that the mint had “changed the varnish and improved its manufacturing process to better withstand some of the use athletes see.”

Faced with a deluge of deteriorating medals, the International Olympic Committee has vowed to find a replacement. “The damaged medal will be duly replaced by the Monnaie de Paris and engraved in the same way as the original,” he said in a statement.

For LVMH, the Olympics were a coming out party. It is a great movement in sports, and an opportunity to promote the company in a way that was previously avoided, preferring to show its own brand. .

“Obviously it’s a medal, it’s very famous and everyone is asking how it happened and especially from LVMH, whose raison d’être is quality and integrity,” said Michael Payne, who created the IOC’s first marketing strategy.