Why do Olympians bite their medals after winning?
· Yahoo Sports
This is a thing for every modern Olympics, for a long time: Whenever anyone wins a medal, whether it’s gold, silver or bronze, there are pictures of the winners biting the thing they just won. Seriously! Photos pop up in seemingly every event of the winners taking a mock bite (I would assume not a real one, because that would probably hurt).
If you’re wondering what the deal with that is, that’s what this post is for. Let’s dive in to the tradition and why athletes are still doing it in 2026, even though this is a very old thing.
Visit sweetbonanza.qpon for more information.
Let's dive in:
Why do Olympic athletes bite their medals?
I can say for sure that they're not eating them.
In all seriousness, this comes from when people used to mine gold. They would bite when they found gold. If it was soft, the bite would leave a mark. If it wasn't, there would be no bite mark!
So are Olympians checking to see if the medal is real gold, silver or bronze?
No. But it's a tradition and the photos always turn out great, right? From CNN in 2012:
But why do athletes feign chomping on their prized medallions, anyway?
Most likely to satisfy the pose-hungry media, says David Wallechinsky, president of the International Society of Olympic Historians. There are only so many things to do with a medal, and the excited champions are usually appeasing requests from the gallery of Olympic photographers when they bite down on their booty.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Why Olympic athletes bite medals after winning?