The Jetpacker

Twenty other cities have previously hosted the Winter Olympics, but Vancouver is the most unique.  The city is already setting records and breaking new ground, so it comes as no surprise that the medals themselves will follow suit.  A unique city deserves a unique medal… and this year’s Olympic medals are truly something special.

Green Is Golden

Olympic medals this year are made out of junk.  6.8 metric tons of old computer parts, circuit boards and cathode ray tubes were excavated from a landfill, melted down and recycled into this year’s bronze, silver and gold medals.  That makes them the first Olympic medals in history to go green.

Bigger Is Better

That’s not usually the case with athletes who remain svelte by eating celery sticks and doing ab crunches in their sleep.  While the rest of us plump up by eating pizza while we watch the Olympics on TV, these superior physical specimens make us feel like jerks for letting our gym memberships expire.

But in a world where bigger is better, the Olympics have to follow the trend.  The medals this year weigh in at 500 to 576 grams depending on the medal (for us non-metric folk, that’s 17 to 20 ounces — more than A POUND), making them the heaviest medals in Olympic history.  No wonder these athletes work out so much… they have to be strong enough to carry over a pound of precious medal (and trash!) around their neck.  That’s the kind of bling that would even make Flavor Flav jealous.

Catch A Wave

Olympic medals up to now have always been flat.  Not this year.  For the first time in Olympic history, the medals will have a wavy form.  The undulating design is supposed to represent the mountainous terrain and the rolling seas of British Columbia.

One Of A Kind

615 athletes in 15 different sports will win a medal at the Winter Games in Vancouver… but none of the medals will be alike.  Each medal will feature a one-of-a-kind segment lifted from a giant piece of artwork featuring an orca whale.  The medals will be accompanied by a silk scarf showcasing the master artwork so the winning athletes can see where their unique medal fits into the complete design.

Similarly, the Paralympic medals will feature artwork from an aboriginal design of a raven.  The master print was cropped into 399 sections that were then individually laser etched onto the medals, which makes these the first completely singular medals in Olympic and Paralympic history.

How Do The Vancouver Medals Stack Up?

Vancouver isn’t the first city to craft an unusual medal.  Previous Olympics have featured untraditional medals too.  The medals at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino looked like a doughnut (despite the fact that doughnuts and athletes really don’t go well together).  And the medals from the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville were mostly made of glass (which begs the question: were they being clever, or cheap?).

But do wavy, recycled medals of Vancouver top that?  Are the 2010 Winter Olympic medals the most unusual medals ever?