Gold medals are the ultimate prize in Olympic sport.
They’re also a misnomer.
There’s no such thing as a “gold” medal, not at these upcoming Rio Olympics – and really, not ever. Second-place finishers get silver medals and oddly enough, so do the winners, albeit theirs are plated in a tiny amount of gold.
That factoid caught even some of those who were put in charge of making the 5,000 or so medals needed for these Rio Games by surprise.
“Our operators and some of our developers had the same question,” said Victor Hugo Berbert, who managed the medal-making process and was part of a team of about 100 people at the Brazilian Mint who were part of the project.