Olympic athletes winning gold on Saturday, February 15, 2014 at the Sochi Winter Games will be conferred a medal adorned with a fragment of the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteorite, reports ITAR-TASS.
Saturday marks exactly one year since a small asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere and exploded over Chelyabinsk.
"We will hand out our medals to all the athletes who will win gold on that day, because both the meteorite strike and the Olympic Games are global events," said Alexei Betekhtin, culture minister for the Chelyabinsk region.
Alltoger 50 of the meteorite-adorned medallions have been minted. In addition to the medals that will be awarded to the Olympic atheletes on Saturday, some medals will be given to the regional Chelyabinsk museum and the remainder will be offered to private collections.
