Rusty Reward for Ponor (30th May, 2006)

Black marks have appeared on Catalina Ponor’s Olympic medals, a sign of oxidation. A relative came for a visit and looked in her trophy cabinet and spotted that two medals had black spots on them. Catalina's mother thought that it was a silly joke but when she looked, she saw it was true.

Cata didn’t know what to say either, as none of her other gold medals have this problem. She's going to see a jeweller to see what he can do. After reading this news in the paper, Silvia Stroescu had a look at her gold medal and found the same faults and because Catalina's case is not the only one, Adrian Stoica will write a polite letter to the International Olympic Committee to ask if they can find a solution. If they can't, then he will take the medals to a specialist to see if they can fix the problem. It's been the first time that anything like this has happened with an Olympic gold medal.

Source: - Libertatea. Translation courtesy Nicole Citroen.