Olympic champions to receive medals made of Chelyabinsk meteorite

The athletes who win at the Olympic Games on February 15, the day of the anniversary of the fall of the meteorite in Chelyabinsk, will receive unusual medals.

Tricolor awards (silver, yellow and blue), made in the style of Zlatoust engraving on nonferrous metals, with the use of gold and silver, will be adorned with small pieces of the heavenly body that exploded above Chelyabinsk last year.

It was said that only "gold champions" will receive medals with fragments of the meteorite. The medals will be awarded to athletes by deputy chairman of the Chelyabinsk region, Vadim Yermolaev .

Only fifty of such medals have been made. Eleven of them have come to Sochi. Ten of them will be given as gifts to Olympic athletes, and one will remain on display at the Sochi Olympic Park as an honorary exhibit.

Chelyabinsk region Culture Minister Alexei Betekhtin said that other medals would be exhibited at the Chelyabinsk regional museum, and then, most likely, will be sold to private collections.

The medals were made at an art studio in the town of Zlatoust, where meteorite fragments had been brought.