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The International Olympic Committee has announced that the medal ceremonies at the Tokyo Olympics will be contactless.
Instead of an official placing the medal around the necks of the athletes, those athletes will now simply place the medals on themselves.
“The medals will not be given around the neck,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in according to The Associated Press . “They will be presented to the athlete on a tray, and then the athlete will take the medal him or herself.”
There are 339 medal events at this year’s Olympic Games.
“It will be made sure that the person who will put the medal on tray will do so only with disinfected gloves so that the athlete can be sure that nobody touched them before,” he said.
Additionally, he reiterated, there will be no handshakes or hugs during the medal ceremonies.
Olympic medals are usually presented by an IOC member or a leading official in a sport’s governing body like FINA.
The International Olympic Committee had previously stated that medalists and ceremony officials would have to wear masks.
The Tokyo Olympics are scheduled to begin July 23, while the city is currently in a state of emergency with elevated numbers of COVID-19 cases.
Here’s hoping there will also be an end to the ridiculous
and utterly pointless charade of the athletes biting their medals, that every photographer always asks them to do!