If you’ve been watching the Rio Olympics then you’ve probably noticed that many of the Olympic athletes who won medals often bite their winning hardware like they were some olde timey prospector testing the authenticity of a gold coin. Well, there’s actually a reason why the athletes bite into their medals like a hot slice of pizza after a night of drinking. And the reason is so stupid.
From Mental Floss:
When Olympic winners pose for a victory image, a sea of photojournalists are snapping away and asking athletes to do something besides just stand there and smile. With no other props handy, winners have picked up the habit of nibbling on their medal to satisfy the photographic feeding frenzy.
That’s it? The reason is because photographers tell them to? How fucking stupid is that? There’s no cool story behind it like back in 152 BC Leonidas of Rhodes won gold and to make sure that the medal was made of actual gold he bit into it because he knows that gold is a malleable metal. And since then, Olympic athletes have been honoring Leonidas by biting their medals for over 2,000 years. Nope. It’s just a photo op.
Actually biting into the medals would be a horrible decision. Yesterday, we learned that the gold medals aren’t even all gold, but actually mostly composed of silver. At the London Olympics gold medals were approximately 93% silver, 6% copper, and 1% gold. The gold medals haven’t been made of real gold since the 1912 Olympics.
One Olympic athlete tried to bite into his medal and actually broke a tooth. German athlete David Moeller chipped his tooth on a medal back at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
So there you have it, Olympians bite their medals because photographers want a unique pic. Go impress your friends with this useless knowledge.