It is always interesting to watch the Olympics. It doesn’t matter if you are a casual observer or if you are a fanatic, there is always something happening to keep your attention.
There are also some things happening behind the scenes that we may not realize. If you really stop to think about it, however, these are things that happen over and over again and they may have been a tradition for many years. Watching an Olympian bite on their medals is one of those traditions.
Perhaps you have seen this happen and you wonder why they are doing it. Could it possibly be that they are testing the medal to make sure that it is genuine?
Actually, the truth is probably a lot less interesting. You see, when they go up for their photoshoot after winning an Olympic medal, they need to do more than just stand there and smile for the camera.
Since they don’t have many props at their disposal, they typically will grab their medal and take a bite. That is why so many of them end up in pictures.
As it turns out, this is more than just an interesting tradition, it is also a hazardous one. David Moeller from the German Luger team broke his tooth when biting on a silver medal in 2010.
You might also be interested to know that people did bite on gold at one time to make sure it was genuine. If you are an Olympian, however, you already realize that your gold medal is not actually made up of gold. Primarily, it is silver and copper to cut down on the price.