Did Lynn Williams Really Break Her 2024 Olympic Gold Medal? Everything You Need to Know

Olympian Lynn Williams explained in a video posted on TikTok this week how she broke her Olympic gold while partying.

By Natasha Bose

Published on Aug 24, 2024 | 04:15 PM IST | 48.2K

Meet the Olympian Who Broke Her Olympic Gold Medal

It takes a special kind of 'dawg in you' to turn a moment as traumatic as losing your Olympic gold medal or worse, breaking it, into a story that’ll be passed down generations. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Team USA soccer player Lynn Williams unintentionally crafted the "world's most expensive coaster" during a wild postgame dance party.

Amid several post-Olympic rumors, like Thomas Jolly being struck by lightning, Lynn’s news was initially dismissed as just another rumor—but it’s true! At 31, Williams took to TikTok to recount how she made it back from Paris intact, though her gold medal wasn't so lucky. During the team’s celebration of their 1-0 victory over Brazil, securing their first Olympic gold since 2012, the medal’s blue ribbon separated from the prize.

Rather than let this mishap get her down, Lynn Williams turned it into an epic tale. She explained on TikTok how she now owns “the world’s most expensive” coaster, and her followers weren’t disappointed. Here’s how Lynn recounted her gold medal’s unfortunate fate:

"Anywho, thought it was finally time to tell you the long-awaited question, how did I break my medal?" Lynn Williams began in the video. "How did I get the world's most expensive coaster?"

“Obviously, you guys all saw me swinging the thing around... Ironically, that’s not how it broke... We were dancing. I had it on my shoulder like a little purse, and I was just jumping—dancing, jumping—and I jumped down, and it just fell off.”

“So, everybody was dancing, and I was roaming around, trying to get my medal off the ground. It has a dent now. So, it’s definitely one-of-a-kind, and the little bar [inside the medal] is gone.”

“So, I don’t know what happened. The bar got loose, and it fell out. Probably, swinging it around didn’t help, but I just think they should have made these better. They should have made them more sturdy, and honestly, I can’t be faulted for that.”

She added that she’s unsure if she’ll get it fixed and is waiting on word from the International Olympic Committee.

"They said I could probably get one," she shared. "I had to prove to them that it was in fact damaged. Now we're just waiting to see."

It looks like this story of Lynn Williams might have a happy ending after all.

A spokesperson for the IOC told People that “damaged medals will be systematically replaced by Monnaie de Paris and engraved in an identical way to the originals.”

Lynn Williams isn’t the only Olympian with a battle-scarred medal after Paris. Nyjah Huston from Team USA, who took home bronze in men’s street skateboarding, mentioned on his Instagram story earlier this month that his medal got damaged too, according to Access Hollywood.

He even posted close-ups showing chips on the surface of the medal.

British athlete Yasmin Harper also noted that the bronze she earned in women’s synchronized 3m springboard had "small bits of tarnishing," as reported by the BBC.