Today at the IOC executive board meetings in St. Petersburg, the medals for the 2014 Sochi Olympics were officially unveiled. Uh, Russia? It looks like a big chunk is missing. The medals were designed by the Leo Burnett advertising agency, who beat out actual design firms and jewelers for the contract. Here's the description, from the Sochi organizers: The Sochi 2014 Olympic and Paralympic medals are unique and feature the Sochi 2014 "Patchwork Quilt" – a mosaic of national designs from the various cultures and ethnicities of the Russian Federation. The medals have been carefully crafted to depict the landscape of Sochi from the sun's rays reflecting through the snowy mountain tops onto the sandy beaches of the Black Sea coast. Each medal is 0.4 inches thick, and 4 inches in diameter. The gold medals weigh one pound, the others slightly more. They are the largest and heaviest Olympic medals ever handed out. With 12 new medal events at next year's games (women's ski jumping, figure skating team event, luge relay, biathlon mixed relay, snowboard and ski slopestyle, ski halfpipe, snowboard parallel special slalom), a record 1,300 medals will be produced. Nearly seven pounds of gold will be used to plate the ( mostly silver) gold medals. Below, photos of the individual medals, and of today's unveiling, attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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