Chinese gymnast Zhu Xueying, who secured a gold in the recently-concluded Tokyo Olympics, created a major buzz online after she claimed that the metal was peeling off from her medal. The Chinese also shared couple of pictures on social-media website Sina Weibo, where she reportedly wrote: "Let me clarify this… I didn't mean to peel the thing off at first, I just discovered that there was a small mark (like pic one) on my medal."
"I thought that it was probably just dirt, so I rubbed it with my finger and found that nothing changed, so then I picked at it and the mark got bigger."
On the evening of August 23rd, Olympic champion Zhu Xueying sent a message to Weibo, saying that her Olympic gold medal had lost a layer of skin, and the upper left had mottled visible to the naked eye. pic.twitter.com/gDPBga7rkt
— Cherry_Chen (@11240Cherry) August 24, 2021
The Tokyo Olympic Games' Organizing Committee responded back to Xueying's claims and as per a report on Global Times it said that it was not the metal plating but a coating, which has been applied to protect the medal from scratches and dirt was coming off.
The medals awarded during the Tokyo 2020 were made of metal extracted from Japanese citizens' recycled electronic devices.
Earlier last month, Japanese mayor Takashi Kawamura bit the gold medal of softball pitcher Miu Goto. However, his action was not well recieved by the citizend and after receiving over 8,000 complaints, the mayor offered to pay for a replacement.