Here’s Why Olympic Athletes Bite Their Medals While Posing For Photographs

Remember these?

Through the ages, we have seen Olympic athletes bite into their medals just as if it was the aforementioned gold coin chocolate.

Well, it is mostly for the photograph. Just an iconic pose. And more often than not, it’s the photographers asking them to do so. Probably to break the monotonous poses that medal winners strike.

But there is some history behind it as well. 

Earlier, biting into the gold was a way of telling it apart from fool’s gold also known as pyrite. Our teeth are actually softer than pyrite but harder than gold. 

So biting a gold medal or coin is likely to leave a small dent, while biting into pyrite may leave you with a pretty bad toothache.

Interestingly though, the Olympic gold medals haven’t been made of solid gold since the 1912 Olympics. The ones at Rio only contain 1.2% of solid gold and the rest is sterling silver, and that too recycled silver! 

These are the most sustainable medals ever made.

There have been incidents of athletes chipping their tooth because of biting too hard as well. Like David Moeller from Germany, who bit into his silver medal with extra fervour on a photographer’s say so. 

If you think about it, celebrations with trophies have been pretty monotonous too. Maybe we can have someone bite into those next?

Well, Rafa has been propagating that for a while. But no one seems to notice!