The reason why Olympic athletes bite their medals after winning

The iconic photos of Olympians biting into their Olympic medals have become a true tradition. When an Olympic winner stands on the podium and receives his medal, he almost automatically bites it for a photo.

Photos of swimmer Michael Phelps, athlete Usain Bolt and gymnast Simone Biles pretending to bite their gold medals are some of the iconic photos from the Olympics.

Why has such a thing become a tradition?

There is no single answer as to why Olympic athletes started this tradition, but here is what is known. How it all began is not known, although it is considered a long Olympic tradition.
During the 2012 London Summer Olympics, David Wallechinsky, president of the International Association of Olympic Historians, told CNN that it was likely an attempt to please the media.

I think they look at it as an iconic look, as something they can maybe sell. I don't think it's something athletes would do on their own.

So you can thank the Olympic photographers for the iconic photos of the medals that have been snapped up over the years. Photographers believe that the pose of biting a medal is a pose that can make the front pages of newspapers and portals the next day and that is why they ask the athletes to do it.

During the California gold rush of the 1800s, the practice of biting gold to see if it was real or fake began. Real gold is a soft material, so the gold piece will show bite marks that can be easily repaired. When gold is fake, the material is harder and the bite is painful.

Since 1912, the Olympic Games have not awarded medals made of pure gold, so there is no need to check whether the gold is real or not. Gold medals now contain at least six grams of gold, mostly silver and some copper.

Solid gold medals were awarded at the Olympics from 1904 to 1912, which was just a few decades after the Gold Rush. If athletes were biting their medals at these games, it was most likely because they wanted to check whether their medals were real gold or not.

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