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Some Olympic gold medalists will receive unique meteorite medal

(Getty Images)

(Getty Images)

Athletes who win gold medals on Day 9 of the Winter Olympics will receive special medals embedded with fragments of the meteorite that crashed in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk earlier this year, according to a report by R-Sport.

Winners of the seven Olympic finals scheduled for Feb. 15, 2014 are slated to receive the medals, Chelyabinsk Region Culture Minister Alexei Betekhtin said in a statement. That will be the one year anniversary of the meteorite crash that injured 1,600 people in the Russian region and caused an estimated $33 million in damage.

“We will hand out our medals to all the athletes who will win gold on that day, because both the meteorite strike and the Olympic Games are the global events,” Betekhtin said.

Tiny chunks will be taken from recovered meteorite and placed into the medals.

Lindsey Vonn will be the presumptive favorite in that day’s super-G competition, so she could be in line for one of the special medals. Other events on Feb. 15 include the men’s 1,500 speedskating, two short track speedskating events and the men’s skeleton.

For the seven winners, getting a mix of Olympic gold and outer space chondrite will make for a once-in-a-lifetime reward they’ll be able to take home and cherish forever — as long as they don’t let Vladimir Putin try it on before they leave.

(Thanks to NBC OlympicTalk for alerting us to this story.)

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