Gold medalists on Day 9 of next year’s Winter Olympics will get special medals containing fragments of a meteorite that hit Russia earlier in 2013.

Gold medalists on Day 9 of next year’s Winter Olympics will get special medals containing fragments of a meteorite that hit Russia earlier in 2013.
Small pieces of the 11 ton meteorite that hit the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, causing around 33 million dollars in damage and injuring 16 hundred people will be added to the gold medals.

Seven Olympic finals are set to take place on February 15, 2014, and those athletes who win first place will be awarded with special commemorative medals made of gold mixed with chondrite from outer space, as part of the one year anniversary of the meteor strike.

Chelyabinsk Region said: “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.”

The winners of events scheduled for that day including “the men’s 1,500-meter speedskating, the women’s 1,000 and men’s 1,500 short track, the women’s cross-country skiing relay, the men’s K-125 ski jump, the women’s super giant slalom and the men’s skeleton” will receive the special medals.