Why Olympians Bite Their Medals

You’ve probably seen the pictures of winners at Olympic medal ceremonies biting their gold medals. In this video, Simon Whistler of Today I Found Out explains why they do it. Yes, they only do it because the photographer tells them to, but why does the photographer tell them to?

If you are of a certain age, this will make you feel ancient. Many of the Olympic gold medal winners don’t themselves know why they are supposed to bite their medals. But if you’ve watched enough silent films, Warner Bros. cartoons, and Laurel and Hardy movies, you’re familiar with this old trope left over from the days when some coins were actually made of gold. (via Laughing Squid)

Olympics Cheater

We've all been enjoying watching the Olympic games in Paris. Sometimes it's to cheer on our national team, or maybe just to bask in the awesomeness of people who are way more athletically talented ands skilled than we are. But sometimes the news behind the games comes up and destroys that excitement.
Yeah, it took me a while to figure out what's happening here. You may have to watch it second time to catch all the particulars, like I did, to see where everything went wrong. Foil Arms and Hog had to do something with the Olympics and this is what they came up with. As one commenter said, they take gold in the long jump to conclusions.

Incidentally, Kellie Harrington is an Irish lightweight boxer who won Olympic gold in both the 2020 (in 2021) and the 2024 games, and announced her retirement after the competition.

Viral Moments from the Paris Olympics

This video is far from all-inclusive, because the Olympics will continue until Sunday. It does not include the Gabriel Medina photograph, nor the Tim Elter photograph. Maybe WatchMojo isn't into surfing.

Olympic Games In London (1908)

 

This doesn't seem all that odd until you see the women athletes and what they had to wear. (via Everlasting Blort)

Tweet of the Day

Olympics is sick. I wake up, make a coffee, watch pistol shooting, archery, table tennis, eat lunch, watch swimming for 3 hours, watch horses do tricks, watch a skateboarding final, eat dinner, watch archery, tennis, more swimming, volleyball, brush my teeth, go to bed & repeat.

— C h e l c e e G r i m e s (@ChelceeGrimes) July 30, 2024

I know, I'm exhausted, too.

And suddenly I want play rugby, do a backflip, buy a skateboard, play badminton, join a handball league, get a surfboard

— Duda Pavão is watching the olympics (@dudapavao) July 30, 2024

Same, but "want" is all I will do. (via Buzzfeed)

A First for the Olympics

The Olympic torch relay has been going on since April, when the flame was lit at Mt. Olympus in Greece. As the torch nears the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, the more prestigious the torchbearers are. The final torchbearers who lights the Olympic flame is a mystery, and it's always a parlor game to guess which host nation superstar athlete it will be by process of elimination.

French athlete Kevin Piette is one of the 2024 torchbearers. Piette became a paraplegic 11 years ago, and will compete in the Paralympics in tennis. He is also a "test pilot" for the French company Wandercraft that developed the Atalante X, a self-balancing walking exoskeleton designed to be used by people with disabilities. Tueday, Piette became the first Paralympian to participate in the torch relay wearing an exoskeleton.  (via Laughing Squid)

Tweet of the Day

Putin fell asleep during the opening ceremony of the Olympics. pic.twitter.com/Eplkr6QThd

— MRCTV (@mrctv) February 4, 2022

You'd think that someone in his security detail would have known that the cameras would be on Putin when Ukraine entered the stadium. They were a little slow on the draw. (via The Daily Beast)

Winter Olympics

(via Fark)

Setting Off a Metal Detector in Japan

Coming home from the Olympics, Kelsey Mitchell walked through an airport security metal detector, and the alarm went off. Oh dear, what could have caused that? Mitchell wordlessly fessed up once she had everyone's attention- it was her gold medal! She won Canada's seventh and final gold medal, in women’s track sprint, a cycling event. Her video has since gone viral for its cheekiness. (via Bits and Pieces)

Tweet of the Day

One time, probably in ‘00, my niece said she’d wanna be in the Olympics if she was a boy

“Girls are in the Olympics, too,” I said

“I know,” she replied. “But they gotta do everything in a bathing suit.”

I laughed my ass off

But I think about it every time I watch the Olympics

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) July 31, 2021

(via Bored Panda)

Russia

(via Bored Panda)

Pointless

(via Bored Panda)

Tweet of the Day

Just found out the plane that will take the equestrian’s horses to the Olympics is named Air Horse 1 and I can’t explain how happy that makes me.

— Simon Holland (@simoncholland) July 17, 2021

More about Air Horse One. (via Bored Panda)

The Difference Two Inches Makes

At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the women's all around gymnastics competition began with a disaster. The world's greatest gymnasts were falling and crashing at the vault. It was the 19th competitor who insisted that the vault height be checked, and it was two inches (5cm) lower than regulation height! No one had adjusted it after the men's competition the night before. The upshot was that the gymnasts had the floor come at them much faster than in their years of training. When the error was discovered, competitors were offered a chance to re-do their vault, but it was too late for some. Several were injured, and many were so shaken that it affected their performances in other events. (via reddit)

Performers Recreate 50 Olympic Pictograms

A guy in a blue-and-white suit contorts his body to faithfully depict 50 Olympic pictograms that we all know and love. The real fun comes when the pictograms get difficult, and the performers have to get creative, like using just small parts of the body, or turning the camera upside down. Remember, the athletes doing these things in competition have abilities the rest of us don't! (via Everlasting Blort)

Every Olympic Cauldron Lighting

The climax of the opening ceremonies at every Olympics is the lighting of the Olympic cauldron, which signals the official opening of the games. It's been a tradition since 1936, when the first Olympic torch relay carried a flame from Mt. Olympia in Greece to the games in Berlin. However, there is no existing footage of the cauldron lighting from that year. Here's a compilation of clips from the opening ceremonies from all the summer games, in order. The lighting of the Olympic cauldron gets bigger and more elaborate each year. The opening ceremonies of the 2020 Summer Games will be tomorrow -a year late and drastically stripped down- in Tokyo. (via Mental Floss)

Not Actually Jesse Owens

Or Jessie, either. (via Bad Newspaper)

No Dying on the Ice

Remember that time when everyone who participated in ice dancing died at the end of their routine -or even at the beginning? It may have been dramatic, but the powers-that-were didn't think falling on the ice was something that the best ice dancers should be doing. This Olympic featurette was broadcast during the 1994 games at Lillehammer. (via Everlasting Blort)

Meanwhile, at the Olympics

meanwhile at the Winter Olympics pic.twitter.com/4YFE0669Nj

— It's A Guy Thing (@ItsGuyThing) February 18, 2018

Tweet of the Day

[figure skater does something]

me: “THAT’S AMAZING”

announcer: “And that’s really going to cost her, you just can’t be making those sloppy mistakes at this level”

— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) February 11, 2018