Taking home a gold medal from the Olympics is special enough, but a handful of lucky athletes will be leaving the 2014 Winter Games with an enhanced medal of sorts.
Russian officials announced Wednesday that some of the gold medals that will be handed out on February 15, 2014, will be embedded with meteorite fragments from the same meteor that struck the Russian city of Chelyabinsk exactly one year prior, and injured 1,600 people.
“We will hand out our medals to all the athletes who will win gold on that day, because both the meteorite strike and the Olympic Games are the global events,” Chelyabinsk Region Culture Minister Alexei Betekhtin said.
Seven of the meteor-infused gold medals will be up for grabs on Feb. 15. The events scheduled for that day are men’s 1,500 meter speedskating, women’s 1,000 meter speedskating, men’s 1,500 short track, women’s cross-country skiing relay, men’s K-125 ski jump, women’s super giant slalom and men’s skeleton events.
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