Olympic diploma
Paper certificate awarded to the top eight finishers in competitions at the Olympic Games
An Olympic diploma is a paper certificate awarded to the top eight finishers in competitions at the Olympic Games.
The practice of awarding diplomas has existed from the start of the modern Olympic Games in 1896, at first being awarded only to the winner of each event. The number of participants so awarded has increased over time, expanding to all three medallists from 1923, the top six finishers from 1949, and the current practice of eight from 1981.
The diploma is inscribed and signed by autopen with the signatures of the president of the International Olympic Committee and the head of the organizing committee for each Olympics. The design of the diploma, as with the design of the Olympic medals, is a matter for the local organisers of each edition of the Games. However, the designs must be approved by the IOC.
The New York Times reported in 2014 that, even among athletes who should have received them, many were unaware of the diploma's existence.
“Olympic diploma” enters the record as paper certificate awarded to the top eight finishers in competitions at the Olympic Games. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Olympic, diploma and Paper can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q784854. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1896, 1923, 1949 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Olympic diploma” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.