Value of the London 2012 Olympic Medals

If the London 2012 Olympic medals look big, it’s because they are big.  They‘re 20% bigger than the Beijing 2008 medals (in diameter), and 40% bigger than those awarded at Athens in 2004. In fact, they're the largest Summer Olympic medals ever. Perhaps more importantly, they are also the heaviest, as in twice the weight of the Beijing medals. If Michael Phelps had won as many golds in London as he did in Beijing and wore them around his neck all at once, he’d have 7 pounds of metal hanging on his chest.

     

The weight of the London 2012 medals is 375-400g, and they are 85mm in diameter and 7mm thick. That’s 0.83-0.88 pounds, 3 1/3” in diameter and 1/4“ thick. The largest Summer Olympic medals before London were those from Barcelona, in 1992. They were 70mm across and weighed 231 grams. In the Winter Games, there have been several that had larger and/or heavier medals, with the largest being 107mm (4.2") in Torino in 2006. 

What are the London 2012 Olympic medals made of? By the numbers, gold and silver Olympic medals have almost exactly the same metal composition. Since 1978, the International Olympic Committee requires that both gold and silver medals be 92.5% silver. The gold in the gold medal just needs to have at least 6 grams of gilding. Other materials can be added to the mix as long as they don’t shortchange the gold and silver requirements.  For the London 2012 medals, copper is the extra ingredient added to the gold and silver medals to bring them up to their full weight. 

As for the bronze medal, a lot of people are happy that they won at least one of those, but it really is a big step down from the gold and silver, at least in content. The London 2012 bronze medals are 97% copper, 2.5% zinc and 0.5% percent tin. If U.S. pennies were 100% copper (which they’re not), the bronze medal would be equivalent only to about 144 of them.   

So how much are the London 2012 medals worth? To the athlete they have enormous indeterminable value, but the value of the metal in definitely calculable. As would be expected, the metal in the bronze medal is worth only a small amount, less than $5. The silver medal is worth between $300 and $350. The gold medal is worth about $650. 

Olympic gold medals haven’t been solid gold since 1912, so it’s the norm to make them out of something other than gold with only a gold covering. If they were solid gold, they would be worth a lot more. If the size were kept the same, a London 2012 solid gold medal would be worth about $24,000.

What is the design on the medals?

On the obverse is the goddess of victory, Nike. A lot of media have incorrectly stated that she is shown coming out of the Parthenon. The Parthenon is in the background, but she is actually walking/flying of the Panathinaiko Stadium in Athens. The Panathinaiko Stadium was the centerpiece of the 1896 Olympics in Athens, which was the start of the modern Olympic movement. Another thing some major media have gotten wrong is stating that Nike has always been shown on Olympic medals coming out of this stadium. The truth is that between 1928 and 2000, Nike was shown next to the Colosseum. In 2004, Athens as the host city decided to correct this historical inaccuracy and put Nike where she belonged, in Athens, Greece, and not hanging out next to the Colosseum in Rome.

The reverse is an original design by the artist David Watkins. It shows the London 2012 logo on top of a ribbon representing  the River Thames.  According to the LOCOG site, the design also has these symbolic elements:

• The curved background implies a bowl similar to the design of an amphitheatre.
• The core emblem is an architectural expression, a metaphor for the modern city, and is deliberately jewel-like.  
• The grid suggests both a pulling together and a sense of outreach – an image of radiating energy that represents the athletes’ efforts. 
• The River Thames in the background is a symbol for London and also suggests a fluttering baroque ribbon, adding a sense of celebration. 
• The square is the final balancing motif of the design, opposing the overall circularity of the design, emphasizing its focus on the center and reinforcing the sense of ‘place’ as in a map inset.

  

Triva: the majority of the metal in the London 2012 Olympic medals came from the Kennecott Copper Mine in Utah. (Besides copper, the mine also produces gold and silver.) So whenever there's reference to bringing the medals home, it's literally true.

photo: London 2012, LOCOG

2001 Nike Tag Commercial Is "It"

One of the greatest television commercials ever is the Nike “Tag” commercial. In the TV ad, a young man is walking along in a large city with his newspaper and coffee and is “tagged” from behind. Since he is now “it”, he is required to chase all the people around him, who are now fleeing to get away from him, so that he can tag someone else to be “it”. Humor ensues as he finds it difficult to chase and make contact with any of the ordinary city dwellers who have now stopped their normal routines and become intensely active in this massive citywide game.

The Nike “Tag” commercial was one of four TV adverts in a summer 2001 Nike campaign that had the theme of “Play”. The other three commercials in the campaign were “Shaderunner”, “Racing”, and “Tailgating”. The Tag ad premiered on American television on June 25th, 2001, and ran until Labor Day, September 3rd, 2001. It had the unusual length of 90 seconds for its initial version, which ran on television for a week. After that, a 60 second and 30 second version were used instead.

The Tag commercial, from the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), was a huge success in the advertising world, winning the Grand Prix at the 2002 Cannes International Advertising Festival. It was one of the ten most-awarded commercials of 2002, and in 2010 was voted one of the top ten advertisements of the decade by Campaign magazine.

Three of the Nike “Play” commercials, Shaderunner, Racing, and Tag were filmed together in Toronto, Canada. Location scouts spent a month looking for the right spots to film in Toronto, but because of bad weather during the filming period, changes in the scripts, locations, and schedule had to be made. It was decided to film all three commercials simultaneously in a compressed 10 day period, shooting scenes whenever a location was available and the weather was cooperating.

“Shaderunner” required real shade being cast by the city buildings onto where the runner was running, and so the filming of the other two commercials had to work around the availability of sun and shade as the film crew had to move quickly to use it whenever they had it. The filming of Tag then ended up having a lot of “winging it” to get it done in the time available. That flexibility allowed such important ideas like the trashcan hiders to be added while filming was going on.

The film crew used 16mm film and three cameras to shoot each scene. The goal was to do each scene in one take, and the three cameras would allow for different views of the action to be put together. With the short schedule and 400 to 500 extras taking part, it was important to minimize the retakes.

The success and the lasting appeal of the commercial can be attributed in part to the sympathetic protagonist of the piece and the actor who played him. Who is the guy in the Nike Tag commercial, the one who is “it”? It is actor Moti Yona, also known as Moti Yona Rosen, or Moti Rosen. He is a Canadian actor, who among other things appeared as Charley in the 2003 move Twist. Tag was Moti’s first commercial. The story is that he was selected right before filming from the hundreds of extras who answered the call to show up and be part of the commercial. Moti was amazed to be the lead, and with the many extras around him during his first scene (the crane shot showing his realization and exasperation that he had been tagged), it felt to him like being in a feature film.

The commercial was shot in several locations in Toronto, which was evident by the reflection of the CN tower on the glass side of an office building in one of the shots. The initial scene of Moti being tagged was at the intersection of York and Wellington, next to the Canadian Pacific Tower. The famous scene of the line of people hiding behind the trashcan was at Emily and King Streets. An interesting production note is that when the mob of people are running north on Emily to King Street, the film is reversed. When Moti gets to the intersection and looks around, the film is the correct orientation again.

After Moti realizes that people are hiding behind the trashcan and starts to chase them, people run down the stairs into the St. Andrew subway station. When they get to the bottom, they are however at Toronto’s abandoned Lower Bay station, which was only used as an actual subway station for six months after it opened in 1966. It was closed and unused thereafter, but it found a second career as a filming location for many movies, television and commercials.

The music for the Nike Tag commercial was an original piece written by David Wittman, a composer at the music production company Elias Associates. The advertising agency had asked him to create something that didn’t sound like a typical TV advert score, and he was happy to comply. The techno track he composed included drums, a cello baseline, a bongo solo throughout, and some simple techno-type elements. Wittman wanted a fun sound that fit the intriguing and unusual storyline.

The shoes on Moti Yona are the black/grey Nike Air Fantaposite Max. The strangest aspect of the commercial is that everyone, including businessmen in dress shoes, is all able to outrun the guy wearing these Nike shoes. That’s not necessarily a good testament for the shoes’ capabilities.