Is It Time To Stop Saying Athletes Won Gold At The Olympics?

Is It Time To Stop Saying Athletes Won Gold At The Olympics? | Sports Takes & News | TooAthletic.com

“Going for Gold” has been a phrase associated with the Olympic Games for generations. Nowadays, however, winners of the top prize at the Olympics would be hard pressed to find any of that “precious metal” in their medal. So, I must ask the question: Is it time to rename gold Olympic medals?

As reported by Insider.com last week, the so-called gold medals of the Tokyo Summer Olympics only contain about 6.7 grams of the precious metal, barely one percent of the prize’s 1.2 pounds. This is a ten percent increase over the gold medals made for the 2016 Rio Games, but those were also weighted slightly less, keeping the overall proportions about the same. So, what makes up the remaining 98.8% of the “gold medal” you ask?

Silver… which was used in the making of the Games’ second place prize.

According to the same report, those who take home a Bronze Medal from Tokyo this summer won’t find any of that metal in their metals, with organizers using a combination of 95% copper and 5% tin to create the third-place prize. Why such a difference between what the medals should be and what they made up?

Here’s at least part of the answer.

The components used to make this year’s Olympic medals came from recycled electronic devices, including over six million cell phones.  Those who were involved in their recycling found that it took an average of 40 cell phone to reclaim one gram of gold. Nearly 79,000 tons of recycled goods were used for the nearly 5,000 Tokyo medals, making this the first time citizens provided the metals used to make Olympic medals.  For an event that provided athletes with cardboard beds, the move to use recycled products for medals fits with the Games’ overall theme.

As the cost of hosting the Olympics skyrocket, the ability to save money in every way possible will become a priority for some locations, while others may forgo some costs in the name of national pride. Those in charge of the Tokyo Games had their plans for what they were going to do and stuck to it regardless of what the world thought then or thinks now. When the Olympic were revived in the late 19^th century, winners earned an olive wreath and a Silver Medal, with second place competitors earning Copper Medals and third place finishers awarded Bronze Medals.

With athletes normally earning cash prizes from their governments for winning medals, providing a prize at the games that is worth less than what they are receiving on the medal stand seems somewhat silly to me. And whatever symbolism associated with giving out gold-plated medals seems to diminish the achievements of every winner a little bit. Perhaps the vanity associated with Gold should be removed from the Olympics, but with “Going for Gold” so engrained in our culture thanks to the marketing efforts of networks and advertisers, I doubt that will ever happen.

In the end, however, it is not necessarily what the medals are made of that means the most to those who win them, but what they represent to those who earned them. For that, only the Olympic athletes can answer. I, for one, believe that whatever the medals are made up, it is the achievement that I am more impressed with, not the medal athletes win.

So, in my mind, an Olympic champion should be able to pick their own prize with the host nation providing a selection for them to choose from. Only then will the prize match the personal achievement of every athlete, with the symbol and the memories forever linked. 

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Is It Time To Stop Saying Athletes Won Gold At The Olympics? | TooAthletic.com

The post Is It Time To Stop Saying Athletes Won Gold At The Olympics? appeared first on TOOATHLETIC TAKES.

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By: Rafael Thomas
Title: Is It Time To Stop Saying Athletes Won Gold At The Olympics?
Sourced From: tooathletic.com/is-it-time-to-stop-saying-athletes-won-gold-at-the-olympics/
Published Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2021 17:54:10 +0000

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