They met in locker rooms. They met in suites. They met in hallways. The interactions were usually brief.
These weren’t spies or drug test collectors. They are the staff of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. And to collect items that tell the stories of the Paris Games, they needed to be everywhere.
There were 32 sports and 329 medal events crammed into two weeks. Many produced first-time winners or indelible moments. So museum staff members fanned out as history happened to gather mementos: a gymnast’s leotard, a fencer’s saber, a Grand Slam tournament champion’s tennis racket, an opening ceremony outfit.
“It’s like a treasure hunt,” said Anna Volz Got, part of the museum’s heritage acquisitions team.
Sometimes the treasures are easy to find and the athletes eager to donate. Sometimes it’s harder to track down the right person to ask for a contribution, or persuade a competitor who is not ready to part with a valuable item forever. It’s all about working connections and waiting. But staff members said they don’t twist arms: The donations are always voluntary.
“We want to acquire treasures, but we’re not in ‘Indiana Jones’ mode,” said Yasmin Meichtry, who has led the team since 2015.
With more than 100,000 objects, including from every Games since the modern era began in 1896, the museum houses the world’s largest collection of Olympic history. Nearly six million people have visited since it opened in Lausanne, the home of the International Olympic Committee, in 1993.
The museum’s collection includes a medal from every Olympics; the torch from every Games since that tradition began, in 1936; the shoes donned by the American track and field athlete Jesse Owens during the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany; the swimsuit worn by the American swimmer Michael Phelps in 2004, when he won the first of his 23 career Olympic gold medals; the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt’s jersey from the 2008 Beijing Games, where he won his first two gold medals; and one of the leotards used by the American gymnast Simone Biles during her five-medal performance in 2016.
Among the museum’s most unusual artifacts: the front of the Ferrari racing car used during the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy, and a curling stone from the 1924 Winter Games in Chamonix, France, acquired only a few months ago.
There is a story behind the acquisition of every piece. Sometimes the donation occurs at the Olympic venue right after the competition. At the Tokyo Games in 2021, Volz Got collected the uniform of the Cuban wrestler Mijaín López within minutes of his winning his fourth consecutive gold medal in the 130-kilogram (286.6 pounds) Greco-Roman category. (He won a record fifth in Paris.)
“We went back to the hotel with a very sweaty, huge singlet that I had drying in my bathroom for the night,” she said.
Sometimes an item arrives at the museum later, once the athlete is ready to say goodbye to it. Sometimes the handover happens in a formal setting.
In Paris, the judoka Diyora Keldiyorova donated the uniform she wore when she won her gold medal — the first Summer Olympic medal for an Uzbek woman — during a news conference so that government officials from her country could also participate.
“It’s an honor for me,” Keldiyorova said after she signed the uniform, a common request from the museum as proof of authenticity.
Some athletes, of course, would rather keep their gear, as it is valuable emotionally and often financially. But those who made donations did so knowing their items would be preserved by curators and seen by a larger audience.
“It’s even better to have my judogi in the museum” than at home, the French judoka Clarisse Agbegnenou said. She donated her uniform after winning her first gold medal, at the Tokyo Games. “And when they grow up, if I bring my kids, or my family, they can see it.”
Long before the Paris Games began, the museum staff divided up the sports and reached out to the federations that run each one. They contacted the Olympic committees of countries and territories. They called and messaged athletes’ associates. In Paris, they did those things in person.
“You have to find all kinds of ways,” Meichtry said.
The team of six held a daily morning call, going over its plans for the day and updating its wish list, which included such big names as the Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis and the American basketball stars LeBron James and Diana Taurasi.
Also among the team’s asks: Snoop Dogg’s Olympic pin and the wet suit used by Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris when she swam in the Seine to prove that it was safe for Olympic swimming events.
“These are the little things that tell a bigger story,” said Anne-Cécile Jaccard, another member of the museum’s heritage team.
One of the most significant acquisitions in Paris was the yellow leotard worn by the gymnast Rebeca Andrade, the most decorated Brazilian Olympian ever, when she won silver in the all-around event — one of four medals she earned during the Summer Games. The museum staff had tried unsuccessfully to get something from her in Tokyo.
Meichtry didn’t ask Andrade to sign the leotard, though, because Meichtry said she didn’t want to ruin “a precious piece that’s so difficult to get and it’s all decorated.”
Not all of the pieces collected in Paris were solely because of performance. Right after the Chinese badminton player Huang Ya Qiong was given her gold medal, her boyfriend, Liu Yu Chen, a badminton player who earned a medal in Tokyo but not in Paris, proposed to her in a moment that went viral. Three days later, in a suite at the Porte de la Chapelle Arena, the couple handed over their signed shirts to Thomas Bach, the I.O.C. president.
Later that day, the museum received a donation with much less fanfare. In a lobby at the arena, the South Korean badminton player An Se-young, who won the women’s singles gold medal, quickly signed and gave over the headband she had worn during the match. It was soaked with sweat.
“Sometimes athletes don’t know why they should give their dirty sweater or shoes and they ask, ‘Do you want a new one?’” Volz Got said. “No, we don’t. We want the one you used.”
The day before, Jaccard met up with Meichtry in a suite at the Roland Garros tennis complex for the men’s singles final between two stars, Novak Djokovic of Serbia and Carlos Alcaraz of Spain.
After Djokovic won his first gold medal, a tennis federation official came bearing gifts: a bag of gear that included a shirt used by the Spanish star Rafael Nadal, who had just played in his final Olympics; another used by Zheng Qinwen of China, the women’s singles gold medalist; and the match-worn (read: smelly) uniform of Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece.
After waiting for two more hours, the museum team was whisked into the locker room, where Djokovic donated his match-used racket (dirtied with bits of clay from the court and signed with his name and “Paris 2024”) and Alcaraz gave a jersey.
“With much love for the museum,” he signed it in Spanish.
Standing outside the arena, the museum staff proudly showed off their yield. It would be shipped to Switzerland, along with more than 50 other acquired items, once the Olympics ended. In the future, they said, the items would be handled with gloves. They needed to be preserved forever, after all.
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