5 ms·

This is one of the things I find most annoying about the Olympics. Oh you spend billions on useless frivolous things. And then the literal gold medal is fake.

gnicholas 5y ago
Unless they made the medals much smaller, that would be incredibly expensive. They give out thousands of medals, after all. Someone smarter than me can calculate the cost based on the size of the medals and the density of gold. Also, athletes would probably feel more pressure to sell their medals if they were solid gold. That would enrich them, which is good, but there's something to be said for the medals remaining in the hands of the athletes.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  Edit: this is wrong, see the comment below, I misunderstood an article that said "339 medals will be awarded". It's 339 events will be contested, and of course team events have multiple medals. Well, not really thousands of medals - in this year's summer games there will be 339 medals awarded, so 113 gold medals. Tokyo gold medals weigh 556g, so if they were solid gold (their weight would differ a bit but be in the same ball park) each gold medal would be worth nearly $33,000 just in metal costs, which would work out to a total of $3,694,286 for all the gold medals.
  - strulovich 5y ago
    I think you miscalculated. 339 sets of medals will be given for a total of 5000. Also, the Paralympic Games add some more medals. So the actual number will be north of 10 million it seems.
    - Thrymr 5y ago
      So, around 0.1% of the cost of putting on the games? https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tokyo-olympics-staggering-price-tag-and-where-it-stands-in-history-11627049612 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tokyo-olympics-staggering-p...
      - lovecg 5y ago
        The extra security around all this gold would probably end up costing more than the medals themselves.
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    > their weight would differ a bit but be in the same ball park Apparently gold is nearly twice as dense as silver: https://www.edrsilver.com/English/ceo-corner/ceo-corner-details/2019/Is-Gold-Heavier-than-Silver/default.aspx https://www.edrsilver.com/English/ceo-corner/ceo-corner-deta...
    - userbinator 5y ago
      Gold is also nearly twice as dense as lead (which is around 11g/cm^3, slightly more than silver.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rowanG077 5y ago
  I once calculated it and came to the conclusion it was easily doable for the medals to be pure gold. Let's take the Rio 2016 medal as a reference. It has 494g of silver and 6g of gold. For a cost of $564 [1]. There were 307 gold medals awarded[2]. This comes to a total of 173148$ for the medals. Let's take the worst possible conversion. i.e. you want a solid gold medal with the same volume as the original. Silver has a density of 10,49g per cubic centimeter and gold has a density of 19.32g per cubic centimeter. So to get the same volume we need 910g of gold to replace the silver. Price of gold per gram in 2016 was about 40$. So this 910g of gold would cost 36400$. For a total gold medal price of 53,329,584$. Let's ignore the silver you no longer need since it's not that significant. For reference the entirety of the rio olympics cost 13.2 billion[3]. Having solid gold medals would be about 0.4% additional cost. Yes it's a lot of money but it doesn't seem unrealistic to me at all. [1] https://somethingborrowedpdx.com/how-much-does-a-olympic-gold-medal-worth/ https://somethingborrowedpdx.com/how-much-does-a-olympic-gol... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Summer_Olympics_medal_table#:~:text=The%202016%20Summer%20Olympic%20program,medal%20sets%20to%20be%20distributed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Summer_Olympics_medal_tab.... [3] https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1051553/cost-of-rio-2016-olympics-rises-to-132-billion-35-billion-over-budget https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1051553/cost-of-rio-...
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    > There were 307 gold medals awarded Does that account for team sports, or Paralympics?
    - rowanG077 5y ago
      It doesn't include team sport and the paralympics. But I wouldn't include the paralympics anyway, just like I wouldn't include the youth olympics. Team sport actually does have to be counted. But I don't think it changes the conclusion. By far the most olympic sports are solo.
      - handmodel 5y ago
        Even if only 10% of olympic sports were team sports - but those teams were things like basketball/soccer/volleyball that have 15+ players per team - that would mean the majority of medals given out are to people who were on a team.
uyt 5y ago
The additional cost might be a small percentage of the budget but what does it buy you? If you can't justify it, it will get cut. All the other frivolous things have pointy haired managers advocating for them. This happens a lot for any sport considered fun or prestigious. For example the prize money from competitive programming in the 2000s was actually pretty decent (topcoder paid out 100k total). Then they realized the top people will still show up even if there's no prize.
- rowanG077 5y ago
  Oh I definitely understand. I just think it's ridiculous. The event is about the olympians. Spending a fraction of a percent of the budget of the event on the price seems fair.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  Oh boy, if I am the best in the whole world at my discipline, and my performance has been broadcasted to everybody, and there's billions here and there made because of it. For sure I want my damn medal to be pure gold.
alephnan 5y ago
What are examples of frivolous things ?
- rowanG077 5y ago
  For example the one time use of all the buildings.
HWR_14 5y ago
It doesn't matter if the gold metal is fake. Assuming you can prove it's real, a gold coated hunk of silver that was a real medal in the Olympics has to be worth more than an equivalent amount (weight or volume) of gold. The same reason no one is concerned about the intrinsic value of dollars. There was, if I recall, an example of two Olympians melting down their medals because of some totalitarian government (Jews in 1940's Germany?) The medals were later recast. Only example I know of of the base value being worth more. Meanwhile, it helps athletes. Because you have to pay income tax on the base metal value, not the assumed collector value. Although the US may have exempted medals from income taxes??
- jmopp 5y ago
  I think you're thinking of how Niels Bohr dissolved two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia for two of his Jewish colleagues when the Nazis invaded Denmark. After the war the gold solution was returned to the Swedish Academy and the medals were recast.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    Thank you. That's what I was thinking of.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  In the US, the prize money and value of the medals is exempted from income for athletes earning less than $1M. https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/17740769/obama-ends-victory-tax-some-us-olympic-medalists https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/17740769/obama-ends...

gnicholas 5y ago

Unless they made the medals much smaller, that would be incredibly expensive. They give out thousands of medals, after all. Someone smarter than me can calculate the cost based on the size of the medals and the density of gold. Also, athletes would probably feel more pressure to sell their medals if they were solid gold. That would enrich them, which is good, but there's something to be said for the medals remaining in the hands of the athletes.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Edit: this is wrong, see the comment below, I misunderstood an article that said "339 medals will be awarded". It's 339 events will be contested, and of course team events have multiple medals. Well, not really thousands of medals - in this year's summer games there will be 339 medals awarded, so 113 gold medals. Tokyo gold medals weigh 556g, so if they were solid gold (their weight would differ a bit but be in the same ball park) each gold medal would be worth nearly $33,000 just in metal costs, which would work out to a total of $3,694,286 for all the gold medals.
- strulovich 5y ago
  I think you miscalculated. 339 sets of medals will be given for a total of 5000. Also, the Paralympic Games add some more medals. So the actual number will be north of 10 million it seems.
  - Thrymr 5y ago
    So, around 0.1% of the cost of putting on the games? https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tokyo-olympics-staggering-price-tag-and-where-it-stands-in-history-11627049612 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tokyo-olympics-staggering-p...
    - lovecg 5y ago
      The extra security around all this gold would probably end up costing more than the medals themselves.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  > their weight would differ a bit but be in the same ball park Apparently gold is nearly twice as dense as silver: https://www.edrsilver.com/English/ceo-corner/ceo-corner-details/2019/Is-Gold-Heavier-than-Silver/default.aspx https://www.edrsilver.com/English/ceo-corner/ceo-corner-deta...
  - userbinator 5y ago
    Gold is also nearly twice as dense as lead (which is around 11g/cm^3, slightly more than silver.)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rowanG077 5y ago
I once calculated it and came to the conclusion it was easily doable for the medals to be pure gold. Let's take the Rio 2016 medal as a reference. It has 494g of silver and 6g of gold. For a cost of $564 [1]. There were 307 gold medals awarded[2]. This comes to a total of 173148$ for the medals. Let's take the worst possible conversion. i.e. you want a solid gold medal with the same volume as the original. Silver has a density of 10,49g per cubic centimeter and gold has a density of 19.32g per cubic centimeter. So to get the same volume we need 910g of gold to replace the silver. Price of gold per gram in 2016 was about 40$. So this 910g of gold would cost 36400$. For a total gold medal price of 53,329,584$. Let's ignore the silver you no longer need since it's not that significant. For reference the entirety of the rio olympics cost 13.2 billion[3]. Having solid gold medals would be about 0.4% additional cost. Yes it's a lot of money but it doesn't seem unrealistic to me at all. [1] https://somethingborrowedpdx.com/how-much-does-a-olympic-gold-medal-worth/ https://somethingborrowedpdx.com/how-much-does-a-olympic-gol... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Summer_Olympics_medal_table#:~:text=The%202016%20Summer%20Olympic%20program,medal%20sets%20to%20be%20distributed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Summer_Olympics_medal_tab.... [3] https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1051553/cost-of-rio-2016-olympics-rises-to-132-billion-35-billion-over-budget https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1051553/cost-of-rio-...
- gnicholas 5y ago
  > There were 307 gold medals awarded Does that account for team sports, or Paralympics?
  - rowanG077 5y ago
    It doesn't include team sport and the paralympics. But I wouldn't include the paralympics anyway, just like I wouldn't include the youth olympics. Team sport actually does have to be counted. But I don't think it changes the conclusion. By far the most olympic sports are solo.
    - handmodel 5y ago
      Even if only 10% of olympic sports were team sports - but those teams were things like basketball/soccer/volleyball that have 15+ players per team - that would mean the majority of medals given out are to people who were on a team.

uyt 5y ago

The additional cost might be a small percentage of the budget but what does it buy you? If you can't justify it, it will get cut. All the other frivolous things have pointy haired managers advocating for them. This happens a lot for any sport considered fun or prestigious. For example the prize money from competitive programming in the 2000s was actually pretty decent (topcoder paid out 100k total). Then they realized the top people will still show up even if there's no prize.

rowanG077 5y ago
Oh I definitely understand. I just think it's ridiculous. The event is about the olympians. Spending a fraction of a percent of the budget of the event on the price seems fair.
moralestapia 5y ago
Oh boy, if I am the best in the whole world at my discipline, and my performance has been broadcasted to everybody, and there's billions here and there made because of it. For sure I want my damn medal to be pure gold.

alephnan 5y ago

What are examples of frivolous things ?

rowanG077 5y ago
For example the one time use of all the buildings.

HWR_14 5y ago

It doesn't matter if the gold metal is fake. Assuming you can prove it's real, a gold coated hunk of silver that was a real medal in the Olympics has to be worth more than an equivalent amount (weight or volume) of gold. The same reason no one is concerned about the intrinsic value of dollars. There was, if I recall, an example of two Olympians melting down their medals because of some totalitarian government (Jews in 1940's Germany?) The medals were later recast. Only example I know of of the base value being worth more. Meanwhile, it helps athletes. Because you have to pay income tax on the base metal value, not the assumed collector value. Although the US may have exempted medals from income taxes??

jmopp 5y ago
I think you're thinking of how Niels Bohr dissolved two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia for two of his Jewish colleagues when the Nazis invaded Denmark. After the war the gold solution was returned to the Swedish Academy and the medals were recast.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Thank you. That's what I was thinking of.
gnicholas 5y ago
In the US, the prize money and value of the medals is exempted from income for athletes earning less than $1M. https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/17740769/obama-ends-victory-tax-some-us-olympic-medalists https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/17740769/obama-ends...