Nearly 9 tons of metal from Rio Tinto”s Kennecott mine in Utah and its Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia were used for the 2012
Olympic gold, silver and bronze medals.

The 2012 Olympic Games medals are the heaviest and largest in
history, the gold medal being
400 grams, or twice as heavy as its counterpart at Beijing back in Beijing. The
London medals still remain below
the record set by the Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010, where the medals weighed up to 576g.

However, gold medals are actually 92.5% silver and
just 1.34% gold now.

“Olympic medals use a
lot of metal but these days the gold
medal is mostly silver. The silver medal is sterling silver while the bronze is
largely copper. The last time the Olympic
Games handed out solid gold
medals was a hundred years ago
at the 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm, Sweden” Mineweb writes.

Experts have pointed out that gold
prices have risen from USD 300 an ounce a decade ago to around USD 1 600 now.

The silver medal is 92.5 percent silver, with the remainder copper, and the
bronze medal is 97 percent copper, 2.5 percent zinc and 0.5 percent tin.

A total of 4 700 medals – gold, silver and bronze – will be
awarded to Olympic and Paralympic athletes across 805 victory ceremonies.