Where America Goes for Insurance Rate Information
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We handle all things insurance on Insurancerate.com and after watching all of our athletes come back from the Olympic Games, make the talk show rounds and show off their precious gold medals, we thought: How would they go about insuring these gold medals? We figured it would be a three step process:
This is obviously the hardest part. An athlete’s best bet is to win a gold medal in a sport that has a lot of events. Swimming has 17 different events one can win a gold medal in. Track in field has 24 different events. Gymnastics also has multiple events that they can win a gold medal in. These events require very specialized people that spend years of their lives training for it. While it may be too late for someone like us to get in the game, there are other, lesser known, Olympic sports that might give them a shot to win a gold medal. Maybe a fringe sport like handball, field hockey or table tennis. Face it; we have all played these at some point in our lives in some sort of physical education class. In college I was really good at table tennis; I think that would be my ticket to gold. If all else fails you could try and qualify for the race walk. Seriously, how hard can that be?
Sounds easy enough right? Throughout history, however, people have had trouble holding on to their gold medals. We have seen numerous gold medals stripped for drug and doping allegations. Recently, the Olympic committee executive board stripped Marion Jones of her gold medals from the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. They also stripped her relay teammates of gold medals that they had won with her in 2000.
Doping is not the only way you can lose a gold medal. Paul Hamm almost lost his gold medal in the 2004 Athens games. Hamm won the gold medal in the all around gymnastics competition because of a scoring error. When the South Korean runner up challenged the ruling, Hamm had to wait for week while he found out if he was going to be able to keep his medal. Eventually, the Olympic committee decided Hamm could keep his gold. Personally, I would have rather seen this settled in a fight. Who wouldn’t want to watch two gymnasts fight each other for the right to a gold medal?
Another way to lose your gold medal? Give it away. Jason Kidd did just that after winning the Olympic gold in basketball in the 2008 Beijing games. While training for the games in Las Vegas, Kidd stayed in the Wynn casino and struck up a friendship with owner Steve Wynn’s wife, Elaine Wynn. Kidd promised he would give her the gold medal if he won one, and he did. Kidd giving Elaine Wynn his gold medal because he “promised” to was a nice gesture. I’m sure it had nothing to do with gambling debt that NBA stars have been known to roll up. It probably came down to Kidd’s gold medal or his knee caps. Moral of the story: If you are about to head to the Olympic games where you are favored to win a gold medal, maybe you should avoid the craps table.
According to published reports, the Olympic gold medal is made with 92.5% silver. Knowing this, I guess winning a silver medal is pretty close to winning gold (only a 7.5% difference!). With the current prices of gold and silver, an Olympic gold medal would be worth only about $220. This is not a large amount of money, but there is a non monetary value of a gold medal that can be insured. Tommie Smith won a gold medal in 1968 and it was later put up for auction with a minimum bid of $500,000. Of course, the gold medal won by Tommie Smith, famously known for raising his right fist in a symbol of African-American unity during the national anthem after his victory, would be worth a lot more than other gold medals.
While the real value of a gold medal may be lower, the intrinsic value of the gold medal is off the charts. It is for this reason that a gold medal can be insured for thousands of dollars.
Personally, I would rather insure a bronze medal, it’s easy money. A bronze medal is going to hold high intrinsic value to the winner but almost no real value to a thief. Seriously, who is going to steal a bronze medal? Bronze isn’t exactly worth a whole lot and the medal signifies the second runner up of the competition. It might as well be an 8th grade bowling trophy! No offense to anyone who has ever won or stole a bronze medal.
Of course if you want to know the real value of a gold medal, put it on ebay:
