The image above is a gold medal that the top athletes at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics will receive. A few gold winners will be rewarded with extra special medals embedded with shards of meteorite.
The meteorite-imbeded medals will be awarded to athletes that win gold on February 15, 2014, the one-year anniversary of a meteor strike in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.
“We will hand out our medals to all the athletes who will win gold on that day, because both the meteorite strike and the Olympic Games are the global events,” said Chelyabinsk Region Culture Minister Alexei Betekhtin.
According to Russian media outlet r-sports, seven of the extra-special medals will be awarded to winners of the men’s 1,500 meter speedskating, the women’s 1,000m and men’s 1,500 short track, the women’s cross-country skiing relay, the men’s K-125 ski jump, the women’s super giant slalom, and men’s skeleton events.
In total, a record 98 sets of medals will be up for grabs in 15 sports at the Games, which run February 7-23, 2014.
—Amy Oberbroeckling is an assistant editor at GearJunkie.com.
