Paris Olympics 2024: Here's why Olympic winners bite their medals

Winning a medal at the Olympics is a validation of all the hard work, sweat and blood the athlete puts into training for the final moment. So it's only a given that they be smiling ear-to-ear on the podium wearing their country's flag across their shoulders and, curiously enough, biting their medal. But where does this little ritual of biting your medal come from? Read on to find out.

What does biting a medal signify?

Usain Bolt bites his medal during Rio 2016 after winning gold for Men's 4x100m relay | Image: Reuters

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If you go back in time, one way traders could check the authenticity of precious metals was to give them the bite test. Because pure gold is soft and malleable, it changes shape even under the slightest pressure.?

But before you jump to conclusions, these athletes don't spend their moment of glory checking how pure the gold or silver medal given to them is. This is one ritual that may have been handed over by history, but continues to this day, especially when athletes pose for pictures.?

Interestingly,?the International Olympic Committee (IOC), hasn't given out a single pure gold medal after 1912. So this makes this little stunt even more pointless, doesn't it?

Then why do Olympians bite their medals?

The IOC hasn't given out a single pure gold medal after 1912 | Image: iStock/representational

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Never underestimate the power of shutterbugs! Athletes bite their medals purely because the photographers ask them to. In the end, it becomes about the winning shot that is to make it to the front page of a newspaper, an image that will stick in our minds for time to come. As a result, this somewhat harmless ritual took on a life of its own, eventually becoming something that's almost expected nowadays.

“It’s become an obsession with the photographers,” David Wallechinsky, president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, told CNN.??

“I think they look at it as an iconic shot, as something that you can probably sell. I don't think it's something the athletes would probably do on their own."

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