The medals handed out at the Sochi Winter Games have gone through the ringer.
They have survived extreme weather conditions and have been subjected to forces of two tons on the rim and eight tons on the face.
They won't be falling off anyone's neck either. The pin attaching the ribbon to the medal has been tested at 100 kilograms of strain.
An employee works on a silver medals for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, at the Adamas jewelry factory in Moscow.
There's a reason for all of these tests. There was a major medal mishap at the World University Games in Kazan, Russia, in July, when 3,014 medals were recalled after some shattered when dropped.
"We have studied international experience, on the basis of which we tried to predict all possible situations - a dip in champagne, accidental falls, someone testing [the medal] with a bite," Sergei Lukyanchenko, technical director of the Adamas jewelry firm that makes the medals, told R-Sport.
There will be 98 sets of medals handed out at the Games in Sochi.
