Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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First Rule Of Bite Club? Don’t Talk About Bite Club [The Curious Olympic Medal Biting Tradition]

Posted Aug 24, 2008 by Jeff Houck

Updated Aug 24, 2008 at 05:11 PM

Today marks the closing ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Now that all of the 302 gold medals have been given out, some observers have been wondering about the curious custom of athletes biting on their gold medalsduring photographers.

The custom of biting a gold medal could stem from an ancient method of testing the value of gold with one’s teeth. The purer the gold, the softer the coin.

At the Olympics, the biting is largely fuelled by the calls of mainly European photographers: “Kiss it, bite it.”

“There are too many shoddy products around these days. Could the gold medal be fake too? Better check!” said one entry on a Chinese Internet forum post.

Gold medals winners may be disappointed. Gold medals are actually made of 92.5 percent pure silver plated with at least six grams of gold, in accordance with the Olympic Charter.

But web surfers have come up with other theories too.

One report on http://www.qianlong.com, a Beijing-based news website, quoted an unnamed “expert” as saying the custom was a Freudian reversion to oral stimulation after the stress of competition.

Romantic observers believe a kiss is not enough to show affection for the medal and a love bite is better.

“They want to know how a gold medal tastes. They ate enormous bitterness before receiving gold medals,” wrote Leonardo on one chat forum.

Nearly every gold medallist and many silver and bronze winners have been asked to bite their medal in the 2008 Games, according to Reuters photo editors, sometimes resulting in an unattractive snarl.

“A lot of people, especially the Chinese athletes, really don’t know what to do with it, so they just rub it against their lips in a very awkward way,” said freelance photographer Natalie Behring.

I’m sure there’s a reason, but as everyone knows, you don’t talk about Bite Club.