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Louise Thomas
Editor
Chinese gymnast Zhou Yaqin’s “relatable” reaction to her competitors biting their medals on the Olympic podium has gone viral.
After winning a silver medal in the women’s gymnastics balance beam final on August 5, the 18-year-old first-time Olympian went viral for her adorable reaction to cameras capturing the moment Alice D’Amato, 21, and Manila Esposito, 17, took obligatory bites of their new medals. Zhou seemed completely surprised by the tradition, with the cameras capturing her eyes widening in shock. She then tried her hand at the tradition without actually biting the medal.
On X, formerly known as Twitter, people adored Zhou’s “golden retriever” and “little sister” energy.
“Just holds it in front of her mouth!” one user wrote. “I love it.”
“She is me and I am her,” another added. “Except no I am not a medalist.”
“Like a lil sister copying her big sisters and it’s too cute!!” someone else commented.
Others noted that the sweet moment reflected the Olympic Games’ ability to bring people from different cultures and backgrounds together for a common goal.
“My (favorite) part of the Olympics are the cultural differences shown by the athletes,” one wrote. “A true learning curve.”
The Olympic gymnasts were following the tried and true tradition of Olympians chomping on their medals. The tradition has become so widespread that during the last Olympics, Tokyo Olympics organizers joked on Twitter: “We just want to officially confirm that the Tokyo 2020 medals are not edible!”
However, historians do believe that it was a way for athletes to prove to the public that the medals were made of real gold, with a small tooth indent on the medals being much more likely to occur on a medal of real gold, which are malleable unlike counterfeit gold.
“We know that only in 1912 the gold medals were real gold and that in all later Olympics the gold medals were made from silver with a gilt layer to show it as being gold,” Tony Bijkerk, secretary-general of the International Society of Olympic Historians, explained to Today. “Unfortunately, the gold layer sometimes had a tendency to fade over the years. Fanny Blankers-Koen, the heroine of the 1948 Olympics in London, who was a good friend of mine, once told me that she had to have her four gold medals re-gilded two times over the years.”
Although the medal isn’t completely solid gold, Bijkerk said Olympians could mark the medal if they bite hard enough like German luger, David Moeller, who broke his tooth while chomping on his silver medal during the 2010 Winter Olympics.
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