Medals of the Olympics - the highest sports awards

In the sports world, there is no more valuable prize for the Olympic medal . They are awarded by the best in the world to athletes. Become an Olympic champion and get the coveted reward means to enter the history of sport forever. Given the extraordinary importance of medals, their manufacture and design has always been given special attention.

This kind of sports awards appeared in 1896 together with the revival of the Olympics. Their first owners were the champions and second-place athletes at the games in Athens. The winners at that time were awarded silver medals, diplomas and olive wreaths. Prizewinners received awards from copper, diplomas and laurel wreaths. The very first medals of the Olympics on the front side were the image of Zeus, in whose hand was placed the globe and the goddess Nika standing on it . And next there is the word "Olympia" in Greek. On the reverse side was depicted the Acropolis and the inscription on the venue of the games. The weight of awards was small - only 47 grams. They minted at the Mint in Paris.

How the rewards have changed

Throughout the history of the Olympic Games, the medals awarded to the winners were of a round shape (with the exception of 1900). The French wanted to surprise everyone not only with the high level of the competition, but also with rewards. Champions were awarded medals of the Olympiad of rectangular shape. In weight, they were 53 grams, 59 mm high and 41 mm wide. The front side had the image of the goddess Nicky, and the reverse side was decorated by an athlete standing on a pedestal with a laurel wreath in her hand.

All subsequent Olympic champions were awarded only round medals. But their weight was constantly changing. The easiest were the medals of the Olympic Games in 1904 and 1908. Their weight was only 21 grams.

Since the London Games of 1908, in four contests in a row, there is no image of the goddess Nicky on awards. And only in 1928 in Amsterdam on medals of the Olympics they returned the Greek symbol of victory. Before the games in Sydney in 2000, the goddess Nick was portrayed sitting, in one hand she holds a laurel wreath, and in the other she eats grain. In 2004, the image of awards became different. On them, the winged goddess is shown flying into the stadium and bringing the most powerful athlete to victory.

In 1924, for the first time, Olympic rings appeared on awards. And since the games in Amsterdam in 1928, medals of the Olympics for several decades have acquired not only the same image created by the Florentine Giuseppe Cassioli, but also the weight of 66 grams. They changed only the inscriptions indicating the place and year, as well as the number of games. Such standard awards were used until the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

On all subsequent games, medals had differences only on the reverse side, the front part was given to the traditional image of the goddess Nicky. At the Olympics in 2004 and 2008, the winners and prize-winners were awarded new awards.

But most of all the surprises presented the Olympics-2012, whose medals were the heaviest in the history of games. They weighed 410 grams with a diameter of 8.5 centimeters and a thickness of 7 mm. This Olympics had the most expensive medals. To produce them, eight tons of gold, copper and silver were needed, which were delivered specifically to London from Mongolia and the United States.