 Medals among 'best in history'
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-21 08:24 The Beijing Olympic medals are among the best in the Games' history, officials and makers of the medals said on Tuesday. Zhao Dongming, cultural activities director of BOCOG, said the 3,000 medals - gold, silver and bronze - were made according to standards set by the International Olympic Committee. The medals were inspected and passed by the National Center of Quality Supervision and Inspection on Gold-Silver Products and the Shanghai Research Institute of Materials, he said. The purity of gold and silver in the medals was 99.9 percent, he said. They are inlaid with jade from Qinghai province. The medals were produced by the Shanghai Mint under the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation. "We adopted advanced technologies and enhanced management during the production," Luo Yonghui, a senior designer at the mint, said. "We are confident that the medals at the Beijing Olympics are some of the best in Olympic history. "To ensure that each gold medal contained at least 6 g of pure gold, we weighed each one before, during and after the medal was gilded. As the medals incorporate precious jade, we made 45 experiments on each medal. The jade never fell off," Luo said. The IOC has strict standards on the material, identification, weight, size and etchings on medals. Each must be at least 70 mm in width and 6 mm thick. The gold and silver medals must contain at least 92.5 percent silver, and at least 6 g of 24-carat gold, respectively. The bronze medals are mostly made of copper. The raw materials for the medals were provided by BHP Billiton in Australia. The company's mining sites in Chile and Australia provided 13.04 kg of gold, 1,340 kg of silver and 6,930 kg of copper. "All the raw materials passed examination and the reports were submitted to the IOC," Zhao said. Xinhua (China Daily 08/21/2008 page5) |
