Steel is a key component of the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics, it has been used in the manufacture of the infamous Olympic rings, as well as the torches and cauldrons.
The Olympic rings and the Olympic torch characterise the Olympic Games, but they are actually recent introductions, considering the tournament’s over two-thousand-year history. The Olympic rings were introduced in 1913 and the torch – which is lit at the birthplace of the Olympics, Olympia, Greece – first appeared in 1928.
Almost a century later, the Paris Olympics are in full swing, while the Paralympians are warming up to take their places on the starting blocks. And, while all eyes are on the stars of the show, steel is playing a major supporting role in its backdrop.
The main icons of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, the five interlinked Olympic rings, also known as the Spectaculars; the Paralympian agitos; the torches; the torch relay cauldrons; and, the Heart of the Torch, which are presented to the 11,000 torcher bearers, are manufactured from steel with a low-carbon footprint by Luxumbourg-based ArcelorMittal.
Torching technology
First, so that the Olympic organising team could prepare as best it could for the torch ceremony, prototypes of the torch were made for test runs. These were created by laser powder bed fusion using ArcelorMittal Powders’ AdamIQ™ 316L powder and were produced at ArcelorMittal Global’s research and development additive manufacturing labs.
The actual torches are made from ArcelorMittal’s XCarb® recycled and renewably-produced, reduced-carbon footprint steel.
Raising the rings
The Olympic rings are also produced from ArcelorMittal XCarb® recycled and renewably produced steel. To produce this lower-carbon steel, scrap steel was melted and pre-rolled at the company’s Châteauneuf and Le Creusot plants. It was then moved to the Dunkerque facility to be rolled into steel plates before being transferred to a workshop near Épinal in the Vosges region, where it was cut, bent, welded and painted in the classic Olympic and Paralympic colours.
The rings, which measure 29 metres wide by 15 metres high, are now in place framed between the first and second floors of the Eiffel Tower. Positioning them here, nearly 70 metres off the ground, was another engineering feat.
ArcelorMittal worked with the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel to work out how the rings could be best placed for visibility while guaranteeing the safety of the monument and preserving its structure. Four cranes were used to lift and attach the rings in place and on the morning of June 7 2004, Paris woke up to see its Spectaculars, a masterpiece of engineering and sustainability.
The Eiffel Tower’s winning ways
The Eiffel Tower takes its place on the winners’ podium too. Iron fragments of the Eiffel Tower, which were removed from the structure during restoration, have been incorporated into each of the bronze, silver and gold medals awarded at the Games.
Gustave Eiffel would never have dreamt that little pieces of his Eiffel Tower, thought to be a temporary structure at the time of its completion in 1889, would, over a hundred years later, end up adorning the trophy cabinets of athletes around the world.
A fantastic testimony to metal’s endurance, sustainability and rebirth.