Winter Olympics 2022: Are Winter Olympic gold medals made of real gold? Why do athletes bite their medals?
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BySam Webb
Published 01/02/2022 at 21:36 GMT
Gold medals have been awarded at the Olympics since the 1904 Games in St. Louis - they are the highest honour an athlete can receive at the Games. But are the medals actually made of real gold? And what's the reason behind the tradition that sees Olympic champions biting into their medals for the cameras? Watch every moment of Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on discovery+
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When Beijing hosts the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics on 4 February, it will become the first city in the world to have hosted both the Summer and Winter Games, which this year's medals have been designed to reflect.
They will feature the "jade-inlaid medals of the Summer Games in 2008" to showcase Beijing as the first "dual Olympic city," according to the official Olympic website.
With 109 intricately engraved medals (named ‘Tong Xin,’ meaning ‘together as one’) ready to be awarded in February – more than the PyeongChang 2018 Games – are Olympic champions actually going to be presented with real gold?
Are Olympic gold medals made of real gold?
Olympic gold medals might look like the real deal, but they are actually made mostly out of silver – the outer casing is normally made of real gold.
They are required to be made up of at least 92.5% silver and only need to contain a minimum six grams of gold.
The medals for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, for example, were made up of recycled electronic devices donated by the Japanese public.
Olympic medals also need to feature the five rings symbol the Greek goddess of victory Nike in front of the Panathinaikos Stadium in Athens and the official name of the tournament - according to the International Olympic Committee.
Back in the day, long before there was an official Olympic website telling everyone what medals were made of, athletes developed their own way of testing the authenticity of their winners’ medals, and it is something that has developed into a tradition that we still see today...
Why do Olympic champions bite their medals?
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Britain's Lizzy Yarnold (centre) bites her gold medal after winning the women's skeleton at Pyeongchang 2018, along with Britain's bronze medallist Laura Deas (left) and Germany's silver medallist Jacqueline Loelling (right)
Image credit: Getty Images
Athletes originally started biting their gold medals as a way of testing whether they were made of real gold. If their teeth left bite marks, it meant it was real.
This may be irrelevant in modern tournaments, but it has developed into a tradition that has grown to the point that you will often now see it outside of athletics. Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal posed for photos while biting the handle of his trophy after winning this year's Australian Open – as he has done after all 21 of his Grand Slam wins.
Nowadays, the main reason an athlete will bite their medal is because a photographer has told them too. But once upon a time, they were testing whether their new medal was bona fide.
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