Category — Kayaking

I’m sure Germany‘s Alexander Grimm, gold medalist in the Olympic Kayak K1, isn’t the first one to bite his gold medal in Beijing but this is the first photo I saw of a medal biter. It’s good to know that the good old tradition of Olympic medal biting is alive and well and won’t go the way of the dodo.

But why do athletes bite their medals? Apparently to test their authenticity. The good guys at Slate Magazine will tell you however that the Olympic gold medals aren’t really made of gold but are made of gold-plated silver.

Photo source: shaun botterill/beijing2008

Poland’s flagbearer Marek Twardowski boasts of 20 European and world championship medals. He hasn’t won an Olympic gold yet but he might win one in Beijing.

Poland Related:
Poland’s Witold Woyda: Two-Time Olympic Gold Medalist, 69

Photo source: msport.gov.pl

They’re not really fighting but they’re also kind of fighting. Contradictory, eh? If you remember our earlier post, we reported that Elvis Stojko, a two-time figure skating Olympic gold medalist, urged Canadian athletes to boycott the Beijing Olympic Games in the name of human rights.

Adam Van Koeverden, world and Olympic kayak champion, is having none of it: “I respect Stojko and his opinion but I think he would have moderated his comments if he was headed to the Olympics to win a gold medal.” [cbcsports.ca]

Clearly, Adam is against an Olympic boycott as he wrote the following in his blog:

To suggest that participation in the Beijing Olympics is somehow ignorant of human rights violations or the situation in Tibet is ridiculous to me. I’m not pledging my support or choosing sides by going to China to compete, if anything I think a high profile event of this magnitude will draw attention to, and potentially lead to solutions to the problems that exist. The exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama doesn’t support an Olympic Boycott, citing that the people of China aren’t to blame for the situation; I don’t think athletes from around the world should be either.

Unless Elvis comes up with a strong comeback — like saying something like “Adam dude, figure skating is much more popular than kayaking, so shut up will ya” — we are putting the score at Adam: 1 vs. Elvis: 0.

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