TOKYO 2020 THE MEDALS
With exactly one year to go before the scheduled start of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, the Organising Committee (TOCOG) unveiled the design of the medals that will be awarded at the Games.Get more news about Metal Medal,you can vist our website!
The winning designs were selected after a nationwide competition open to both professional designers and design students. A specially assigned selection panel had the difficult task of whittling down more than 400 entries before settling on the ideas presented by Junichi Kawanishi, Director of the Japan Sign Design Association and the Osaka Design Society.
The intricate designs, which will adorn all 5,000 medals, reflect patterns of light in order to symbolise the energy of the athletes and those who support them. The designs also represent how athletes strive for victory on a daily basis, as well as the Olympic themes of diversity and friendship.
“It is a great honour that my design was selected for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic medal,” Kawanishi said. “I never dreamed that the design I submitted only as a memorial to this lifetime event would actually be selected. With their shining rings, I hope the medals will be seen as paying tribute to the athletes’ efforts, reflecting their glory, and symbolising friendship.”
Sports fans across Japan have a particularly close connection to the medals thanks to the Tokyo 2020 Medal Project, a landmark recycling initiative which ensured that each one has been moulded entirely from metal extracted from recycled consumer electronics over the past two years.
Under the theme “Be better, together – for the planet and the people”, TOCOG intends to make these the most environmentally friendly and sustainable Games so far. The project attracted donations and support from 1,300 educational institutions and 2,100 electronics retail stores across Japan.
Signature yellow donation boxes were placed in post offices and on street corners all over the country, and a TOCOG partner company enabled the public to donate their used phones at 2,400 stores nationwide.
With more than 90 per cent of Japan’s local authorities participating, a total of 78,985 tons of discarded devices were collected, a haul which included approximately 6.21 million used mobile phones, along with digital cameras, handheld games and laptops, all of which were then classified, dismantled and melted down by highly trained contractors.
This meant that the final goals of 30.3 kg of gold, 4,100kg of silver and 2,700kg of bronze were reached by the time the collection cycle closed on 31 March 2019.
The concept of making the medals from recycled metal is not entirely unique to Tokyo 2020. It has already been trialled at previous Games, most recently at Rio 2016, where an estimated 30 per cent of the silver and bronze medals originated from recycled materials. But the Tokyo 2020 Medal Project has certainly been unique in its scale, marking the first time that a country’s citizens have been proactively involved in donating the electronic devices used to make the medals, in line with the Games’ Nationwide Participation Programmes.
As well as the medals themselves, the medal cases and ribbons were also unveiled, each paying tribute to the ancient traditions of Japanese craftsmanship and the Olympic values. Each case is manufactured from Japanese ash dyed the same colour as the Olympic emblem and, remarkably, every single one will have its own wood fibre pattern subtly infused into the design, representing each individual Olympian who steps onto the field of play.
