I Went to the Olympics, and All I Got Was This Lousy Medal
This is not a picture of a DVD, a bronzed bagel, an Australian aboriginal weapon, or a Japanese yen on an inflation drive. It is, believe it or not, an Olympic gold medal from the 2006 Winter Games.
It’s as ugly as sin, if you ask me.
My wife saw one of these during a televised medal ceremony Sunday night. Her first reaction? “Why are they giving CDs to the winners? Oh, those are the medals.” Personally, I’m wary of getting one of these things near my PC — I might pick up one of those rootkit viruses from the Sony copy protection (although rumor has it you can disable this by running a black magic marker around the edge).
Look, I’m no jewelry designer — I will freely admit that I couldn’t pick out a necklace that Mister T would like. But I do know bling bling when I see it. I look at the medal and wonder who stole the gold chain that came with it.
Stacey’s observation of the medal’s CD-like quality is partly due to its size. This thing is huge. It looks like something you’d use to work your lats in the gym. Thank goodness Michelle Kwan pulled out of the Games before she won one of these — she’d be sporting a neck sprain to go with her groin pull. I just hope they have some burly assistants on hand at the medal ceremony for women’s figure skating. It would be mighty embarassing to throw that puppy around Sasha Cohen only to have her do a face plant in the middle of the rink.
If you want irrefutable evidence of poor design, look no further than this picture of USA medalists Shaun White and Daniel Kass. That’s right, folks — they are eating their medals. This is certainly an understandable reaction. These athletes have been on a strict dietary regimen for months. They took one look at their medals and immediately thought they’d been handed donuts.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
For the country that gives us such compelling beauty as Ferrarri, Lamborgini, Bugatti, Ducatti and Isabella Rosalinni I can be gracious and forgive them the one design flaw, a medal for skiing fast, skating extra pretty and crazy snow bording stunts.
Excellent point. Now, if the French were involved in any way, I say “off with their heads.”
YES!!! Ugliest medals ever. My jaw dropped when I saw teary-eyed atheletes holding up these CD coaster things that reek of cheapness. Shame on the designers for cheapening the athletes’ performances. Hope whoever designed them never gets another design gig again. As if CDs were not ugly enough, let’s make medals out of them.
JM
Wow, someone finally came up with a legit use for all those AOL CDs sent in the mail!