A Chinese Olympian took to social media to complain about what appeared to be a flaw in her gold medal.
"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," Zhu Xueying wrote on Sina Weibo, a social media website, the Global Times reported. "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."
However, the Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee offered up an explanation. It told the Global Times the peeling was likely the result of a protected plastic coating.
“Even if you remove the coating, it does not directly affect the medals’ quality," the committee said.
According to the Olympics, gold medals are made up of more than six grams of gold plating on pure silver. The Olympics said they were created "through the effort of the people of Japan who donated their unused mobile phones and small electronic devices to fund the material needed to create approximately 5000 medals for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020."
Zhu Xueying won her gold medal in the gymnastics trampoline event.
