Salt Lake Olympic champions will go home with a hefty chunk of Utah draped around their necks.
SLOC President Mitt Romney described the 2002 Winter Games medals unveiled Monday as "almost like a piece of sculpture, a piece of earth."
The medals, crafted from gold, silver, copper and zinc mined in Bingham Canyon, capture the Games theme, "Light the Fire Within" and contrasts fire and ice. The smooth, irregular edge is reminiscent of a thick skipping stone.
"These are medals truly from Utah," said Scott Givens, Salt Lake Organizing Committee creative group managing director.
And at 1.25 pounds each, they are the heaviest medals in Olympic history.
O.C. Tanner Co. milled, pressed and etched the base of each of the 861 medals, including extras for ties and International Olympic Committee archives, made for the Games. Each was then hand-finished, making no two medals the same, said O.C. Tanner president and CEO Kent Murdock.
"Each one is a piece of art," he said.
The front depicts an athlete bursting through a mountain of ice and snow bearing a torch. The words "Light the Fire Within" are etched on the left side. The Olympic rings are prominent at the bottom, as suggested by former Olympians SLOC consulted.
"We wanted people to know that's an Olympic gold medal. Not just a medal. It's an Olympic gold medal," Romney said. "That's why the rings are so large."
Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, adorns the back as a tribute to the Games. She holds an olive leaf near her head with her arm curled in front of her face.
The four-member design team at Salt Lake-based Axiom and SLOC wanted to show an Olympian "emerging from obscurity," said illustrator Don Kilpatrick.
"I was trying to capture the feeling of an athlete that steps up on the podium to receive the medal," he said. "That gives me chills to think about."
The medals contain a couple of Olympic firsts: the etched theme and a tiny sculpture of the sport for which it was won. The antique finish also breaks with the more traditional shiny surface.
First-place medals are made largely of sterling silver gilded with 6 grams of gold.
The IOC members initially balked at the not-quite-round shape. Some wanted a perfect circle.
"We had to do some fighting," Romney said. "We wanted something that feels much more like nature, something that comes from the earth."
IOC members debated the issue for months before former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch intervened. He called Romney one day to say, "I like it. Go ahead."
A couple of former Olympians also like it.
"It just is sort of the ultimate of what a medal should be," said Cathy Priestner-Allinger, a silver medalist in speedskating at Innsbruck in 1976 and now SLOC managing director of the sport. "This is something that feels really good to hold."
A fragile medal, she said, isn't durable enough to withstand much handling, especially when it's passed around to children.
Andy Gabel, a member of the 1994 silver-winning 5,000-meter relay speedskating team, likes the Salt Lake medal because it's not "gaudy or crazy."
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