Posts Tagged ‘Gold Medal Winners’

Lizzy Yarnold’s gold in the Women’s Skeleton has written her name in to the annals of British Winter Olympics history.

It also sparked debate as Royal Mail confirmed that our latest gold medal winner would not receive the honour of appearing on a postage stamp or having a post box painted gold in her home town of Sevenoaks, Kent.

A one-off gesture

The first ever Gold Medal Winners stamp to be issued, featuring Helen Glover and Heather Stanning.

Although each British Gold Medal winner in both the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics received these honours, Royal Mail has insisted that the tributes were a one-off gesture intended for British gold medalists at their home games in 2012.

In a statement to Press Association Sport, it said:

“The UK hosted the Games and our athletes extraordinarily well. Because of our status as the host nation, Royal Mail chose to mark the achievement of our athletes through gold post boxes as well as stamps.

For the Winter Olympics 2014, Royal Mail will not be creating gold postboxes but we are exploring other ways of marking the achievements of our athletes, including creating a special postmark.”

What do you think?

Is Royal Mail wrong not to issue a stamp for our Gold medal winners in Sochi or paint a post box gold in their hometown – or both? Or is Royal Mail right, keeping it as a one-off gesture for London 2012? Vote below: