By Lori Ewing
PARIS (Reuters) – Forget the medals. The top prize for many at the 2024 Paris Olympics is a shiny, heart-shaped Simone Biles pin.
Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, has arrived at the Games with a stash of gold-coloured pin badges marked with her name to swap with fans and fellow competitors.
People have been trading national team emblems and other souvenirs at Olympics events for years. But this time round, the enthusiastic involvement of the star U.S. athlete, and a surprisingly long list of other top sporting names, has taken it all to a whole other level.
Two-time NBA MVP Stephen Curry was spotted trading badges on the U.S. team boat during Friday’s opening ceremony.
Curry has won virtually every trophy in professional basketball and his $55.8 million salary next season makes him the highest-paid player in the NBA.
But it was his collection of badges that he wanted to show off in a photo posted online by USA Basketball. “@StephenCurry30 is all in on the pins,” read the caption.
The British men’s tennis team has been competing to see who can collect the most national badges, team member Dan Evans wrote in the Daily Mail.
Former world number one Andy Murray was bragging that he had scored a rare one from Guam, the island in the Western Pacific that has just eight athletes in Paris.
The official Olympics website traces pin trading back to the first modern Games in 1896, where athletes wore cardboard badges. Almost 130 years on, the range on offer has exploded with everyone from national organising committees and sporting federations to media companies and sponsors offering their enamelled mementoes.
Retired tennis star Serena Williams – a self-proclaimed “first-class pin collector” – says she started amassing them at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
The star in her collection is North Korea pin acquired in Rio in 2016. “I would never, ever, ever trade that,” she said in a post on the Olympics Instagram account.
This year, the one that everyone wants is Simone Biles’s shiny heart.
New Zealand’s women’s rugby sevens team have been practically stalking the star gymnast in hopes of a swap.
Black Ferns player Tysha Ikenasio finally managed to score one and showed off her prized possession in a TikTok video.
“Okay but is a Simone Biles PERSONALISED Olympic pin the GOAT of pins?! Lucky Tysha Ikenasio!” the New Zealand team wrote in the post.
(Reporting by Lori Ewing; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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