Looking at past olympic medals, I couldn't help noticing how much more creative thought seems to go into the Winter medals than the summer ones, all of which look interchangeable, like big coins.
Looking at the medals, the first hint of real creativity was 68 Grenoble (with pictograms?) followed by Sapporo 72 the first radical departure from form (which has aged well, I think) 76 and 80 had kind of traditional boring medals
Sarajevo 84 revived the idea of the non-traditional medal with the circle in a square (I like them if no one else does, it highlights the round shape of the medal no matter what the background is unlike medals that fade away against what the wearer's clothes)
Calgary 88 was the last stand of the traditional medal with the ugliest of the lot, it looks like an overgrown slot machine token, the only one that looks really ... vulgar.
Albertville 92 was daring and creative, if not the most practical (what do you expect from the French?) and the granite disc inside the Lillehammer 94 medals lent a nice gravitas and dignity to them (the only medals that look nicer the longer you look at them)
The Nagano 98 medals look like a spin off toy from some Japanese cartoon (Gorudu disuku man?). I know some people like them, but I find them a little precious.
I appreciate the idea behind SLC 02 more than the final product, if they wanted to make them look like stones they should have been more irregular than they were (maybe embedding round medals into actual stones?)
In this regard, I like the Turin 06 medals, evocative of the olympic rings rather than a souvenir big coin and I really like the ribbon tied around them, spontaneous yet elegant Italian style.
I like the olympics less every one that comes around, so I wish that the figure skating would adopt this approach to its worlds medals, unique one of a kind innovative medals rather than the cookie cutter approach.