The Reason Why Olympic Athletes Are Often Photographed Biting Their Medals

Today I Found Out host Simon Whistler explained why Olympic athletes are so often photographed biting their medals. More specifically, he explains why photographers so often ask Olympic athletes to bite their medals.

According to four time Olympic medalist Summer Sanders, mainly because the photographers incessantly ask them to until they do it, usually at the end of the podium photo shoot sessions. The tradition probably stems from the age old practice of testing whether something was really solid gold or not by biting it. Gold is a very soft metal, at least softer than tooth enamel, and if it’s fairly pure, you should be able to leave some teeth marks in it by biting it.