Olympic Medals

For any sportsperson, an Olympic medal is one of the most treasured accomplishments. And it will be no different at the London Games. For the 2012 Olympics, there are 4700 gold, silver and bronze medals up for grabs in deep purple ribbons.

The front of all summer Olympic medals show images of Nike, the Greek Goddess of Victory, stepping out of the depiction of the Parthenon to arrive in the host city.

For the reverse, metalwork designer David Watkins, the 2010 Royal Designer for Industry, created a design on five symbolic elements. It also has an image which is like a "force field of radiating lines".

The five symbolic elements include a dished background, which suggests an arena or a bowl, similar to the design of an amphitheatre. The core emblem is supposed to be a metaphor for the modern city and looks like a crystalline or jewel-like growth. The medal includes a grid which is supposed to reflect a sense of being together and outreach. The image is supposed to capture a feeling of radiating energy to match the athletes' achievements and effort. The River Thames appears as a fluttering baroque ribbon. There is also a square in the centre so that the overall medal has the imprint of a square in a circle.  

The Olympic medals weigh between 375-400 grams, they are eighty-five millimetres in diameter and seven millimetres thick.

The gold medals are not actually made of solid gold. They are in fact 92.5 percent silver and 1.34 percent gold, while the rest is copper. Metals used in the medals were mined in Mongolia and Utah in the United States.

The first medals will be awarded on July 28, in the women's 10-metre air rifle and men's 10-metre air pistol events.