THE gold medals that will be awarded in London this year will be the biggest and heaviest handed out at any summer Olympics. At 400 grams (14 ounces), the equivalent of having a large tin of baked beans hanging round your neck, they will be more than twice as heavy as the average of the previous five games, and almost 17 times heavier than at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm.
On the other hand, the 1912 games were the last one where gold medals were made entirely of gold. Now they consist mainly of silver with a thin coat of gold. Winners in London are advised not to bite too hard on their medals, as they will have a gold content of only about 1.5%. Host cities' organising committees decide the exact design and composition of medals but the International Olympic Committee sets certain rules: gold medals must have a 92.5% minimum silver content and contain at least six grams of gold. In London, copper will make up the rest.
Taking the current price of gold and silver, a London gold medal will be worth $706. Calculations by The Economist find that this is much more than the “podium value” of any previous gold medal (based on rough estimates of the composition of medals and bullion prices at the time of each games, adjusted for general inflation). This is partly because gold and silver prices are now historically high and partly because this year's medal is so much heavier, even though the extra weight is silver rather than gold.
Indeed, for the first time ever, the silver in this year's “gold” medal is actually worth more than its gold content. (This echoes the past in one way: at the first modern Olympics in 1896, winners got only a silver medal.) Moreover, if the metal content of earlier medals is valued at today's bullion prices, the London gold is worth only just over half of those handed out in 1912 (see chart).
