Olympic athletes have long been photographed biting their medals, a celebratory if not entirely hygienic gesture.
But typically they’re biting their own medals. A mayor in Japan learned the hard way that chomping on someone else’s doesn’t go over as well.
Mayor Takashi Kawamura of Nagoya apologized after biting the gold medal of Miu Goto, a member of the Japanese national softball team, during a ceremony on Wednesday as he stood in front of a backdrop promoting coronavirus safety precautions. He was immediately pilloried on social media, where some Olympians said they would be furious if it happened to them.