The NHL agreed last week to allow its players participate in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Up to eleven Washington Capitals could represent their countries in the two-week tournament, but the ultimate goal of Olympic gold just got a bit less awesome.
Chelyabinsk Region Culture Minister Alexei Betekhtin announced on Wednesday that gold medal winners on February 15th will receive a little something extra in their award: part of the meteor that crashed over the city a year before. According to R-Sport, only seven events will be awarding medals that day: the men’s 1,500 meter speedskating, the women’s 1,000m and men’s 1,500 short track, the women’s cross-country skiing relay, the men’s K-125 ski jump, the women’s super giant slalom, and the men’s skeleton events.
So no space rocks for hockey players.
Shards of the Chelyabinsk Meteorite
Since we can safely assume that Team Russia will run wild on their opponents [Ed. note: USA! USA! – Peter] and win gold thanks to superior play and some convenient KGB-engineered poisonings (got a problem with that?), this means the IOC will deny Alex Ovechkin and possibly Chelyabinsk-native Evgeny Kuznetsov a piece of that storied meteorite. Cue the outrage!
R-Sport goes on to explain that several scientific expeditions have collected meteorite shards, chunks of which will be chipped off and inserted into the medals in an effort to turn the elite athletes of the world into irradiated monsters of the week. (Actually, the Chelyabinsk meteorite was also formed of common chondrite and poses no threat to health, but that would have been cool.)
Related: Evgeni Malkin with a camel.
Photo via evgenimalkinwithanimals
Thanks to Kyle Mace who first alerted us to the Gizmodo article.
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