Washington: Ten commemorative medals that will be given out at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi have reportedly been embedded with fragments of a meteor that hit the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia’s southern Ural region last February.
The meteor strike was the second-largest in more than a century, injuring approximately 12,000 people, and fragments found in the medals were taken from a 1,250-pound chunk of the space rock that was taken out of a Russian lake in October.
According to Mashable, officials have commissioned 50 total medals, 10 of which will be given to Olympians who will win the gold in their eight different events, including alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, curling, ice hockey, short track, skeleton, ski jumping and speed skating, on Feb 15, which is the anniversary of the meteor strike.
The ceremony will not be part of official Olympic programming, and the medals will be presented to athletes in addition to their official tokens.