Real reason Olympics athletes bite their medals after winning
Picture it - you're watching the 2024 Paris Olympics as the athletes take to the podium to collect their medals.
The national anthem for the gold medallist plays. And soon after, they're posing for pictures while biting the precious object they've spent years honing their craft to win.
It's one of the more strange phenomena in modern sport, but is something that you see stars do across their disciplines.
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From the Olympics to winning the Premier League or FA Cup, athletes often take a chomp down on what is one of the most precious things they could ever get their hands on as professionals in their field.
Tennis stars have also been seen to do it with their winnings.
In the UK, Great Britain's 1991 win in the 4x100m relay at the World Championships was among the first noticed moments where winning athletes did this.
All four winners - Derek Redmond, John Regis, Roger Black and Kriss Akabusi - posed with their golds between their teeth during the tournament in Tokyo.
More recent legends to have done the same include the fastest man on Earth, Usain Bolt, and the greatest swimmer of all time, Michael Phelps.
Team GB icon Tom Daley also did similar after winning his first gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Games alongside teammate Matty Lee in the 10 metres synchronised platform diving.
Even the Tokyo Olympics referenced medal-biting in a tweet, which said their medals were not 'edible' due to being made from 'material recycled from electronic devices donated by the Japanese public', however, they added: "So, you don’t have to bite them… but we know you still will."
Back in 2012, David Wallechinsky, President of the International Society of Olympic Historians, spoke to CNN about the phenomenon and why athletes do it in the first place.
And from the sounds of it, it's more of a gimmick that is asked of athletes once they've been handed the goods by tournament officials.
"It’s become an obsession with the photographers," Wallechinsky said.
"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."
At this point, given it has been a trend for decades, one psychologist believes we do it because, well, that's what winning Olympians do.
"Sports all have their eccentricities,” said Frank Farley, a professor from Temple University in Philadelphia and former president of the American Psychological Association.
“If you want to be part of the winning zeitgeist, that winning culture, you participate in that winning practice.
"It makes your medal yours. It's an emotional connection with your accomplishment."
It does come with a risk, though.
Back in the 2010, Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, German luger David Moeller snapped one of his teeth doing the pose for photographers at the Games.
"The photographers wanted a picture of me holding the medal just with my teeth,” Moeller told German newspaper Bild.
“Later at dinner, I noticed a bit of one of my teeth was missing.”
Ouch.
The most bizarre, discontinued Olympic sports
Painting
Back in the day, the Olympics dished out medals for art too, with events including painting and sculpture, as well as music, architecture and even literature.
Making its debut all the way back at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm and continuing until the 1948 London games, juries awarded competitors a total of 151 medals for artistic projects inspired by sport.
Tug of War
Bet you didn't think this playground classic was once part of the Olympics, did you?
Well, it turns out not only was the sport popular, but it stirred up a lot of drama too - with accusations of foul play flying around at the 1908 Olympics in London, with Team USA accusing Team GB of cheating due to their 'illegal' heavy footwear.
A mainstay for around five Olympic games from 1900 to 1920, Tug of War enthusiasts have even campaigned for organisers to reintroduce the retired sport back into the Games.
Hot Air Balloon Racing
Launching at the 1900 Olympics, hot air balloon drivers would compete in races scoring how far they could travel, altitude reached, ability to land within the correct coordinates and - to top it all off - who got the best photo from the balloon.
The sport ended up being canned after a ban on motorised sports was brought in.
Live Pigeon Shooting
Also making its debut at the 1900 Olympics, the event was pretty self explanatory - a load of pigeons were released into the air as the competitor tried to shoot as many as possible. Grim.
The event only appeared at the Games once, and all in all, it's estimated that Olympic hopefuls killed around 300 pigeons.
Pistol Duelling
It doesn't take much guessing as to why this event was scrapped, but back in 1906, people clearly didn't bat an eyelid at competitors waving pistols around and shooting at each other.
It began with competitors shooting at dummies, but two years later organisers decided to shake things up and have them shoot at each other with wax bullets. Ouch.
1908 would be the last time the sport was included in the Olympics, so I'm guessing they quickly realised it was a bad idea - wax bullets or not.
Topics: Olympics, Weird, Viral, Sport, World News
Tom Earnshaw