The medals, three gold and one silver from four successive Olympics, were stolen from Oarsome Foursome rower Drew Ginn's car at Melbourne's Docklands.
Police confirmed on Wednesday they were looking for Luke Tones, 47, over the theft and an arrest warrant had been issued for his capture.
Ginn had hidden the medals in a secure spot in his car, which was parked on Cumberland Street, after he'd shown them at a school event more than a week earlier.
They were stolen between 9pm Thursday and 5am on Friday.
"The whole car was ransacked" Ginn told reporters.
The Olympic rower had been unaware the central locking on one of his car doors was faulty.
"It must have been about five minutes, it dawned on me that I'd have been at a school event maybe 10 days before ... and then all of a sudden, I was like, 'Oh no'," Ginn said.Â
"Your heart sinks."
The Olympic medals of former rower Drew Ginn (left) cannot be insured. (Dave Hunt/AAP PHOTOS)
The rower said it was hard to put a dollar value on the medals.
"It's a hunk of metal, they're gold plated. That's the reality," he said.
"But for me, it's just it's a horrible feeling to sort of think and imagine that medal won't potentially be in my family."
The Oarsome Foursome was a series of Australian rowing Coxless Four crews, with Ginn taking part in latter combinations which won gold at the Atlanta 1996 and silver at London 2012.
Ginn also won gold medals in pair events at Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008.
"The outcome I'd like is just for them to be returned, I don't even mind if it's quietly returned," he said.
The Olympian has shown his medals to more than 150 schools in the past two decades, and hoped he would be able to do so again.
"I like the idea that these medals are medals for Australia," Ginn said.
"It's not just you as an athlete representing your country, you're representing every single person."
Senior Constable Edward Stevens urged Tones, who was known to police and identified in CCTV footage, to hand himself into police.
"It's not going to go away," he told reporters
"We're going to continue looking for him and we will eventually find him."
Anyone with information on Tones, who frequents Richmond, Abbotsford, Collingwood and Melbourne CBD, is urged to contact police.
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