At the 2024 Paris Olympics, there are 329 medal events, meaning there are more than 900 medalists in all of the contested events in France.
Every single medalist at the Paris Olympics receives their medal -- gold, silver or bronze -- on the medal stand. They also all receive a gold-looking rectangular box that most medalists are seen holding on the medal stand as the gold-medal winner's national anthem is played (unless the winner is from Russia or Belarus, as those athletes are competing as Individual Neutral Athletes, or AIN).
What's in that gold box has been the source of a lot of curiosity, but the contents are a unique gift to Olympic winners.
Inside the boxes is the official 2024 Paris Olympics poster. The poster was created by artist Ugo Gattoni, who also designed a poster for the upcoming Paralympics in Paris. Gattoni spent four months to create the work, putting some 2,000 hours of effort into the intricate design.
However, the Olympic medalists aren't just getting the same poster available to everyone else. They get a unique version of it, depending on the medal they won. There's a special section in the poster just for the medalists that have a sticker with the color of the medal they won. It's a pretty cool way to showcase an Olympic triumph -- of course, beyond the medals themselves.
With 329 medal events in these Olympics, there are 987 total medalists. While the overwhelming number of those medal events are in individual sports, though there are a variety of team events, too, that mean more than one person is awarded a medal for all three positions. That means well north of 1,000 different medals are awarded in the 16 days in Paris. Of course, there's some overlap in several sports with a variety of athletes winning multiple medals.
Golf is an individual sport, however, and there is just one event for men and one event for women, meaning a total of six medals -- and six posters -- are given out as a result.
