Keeping with our Olympics theme for Mundane Mysteries today’s question… what happens if there is a tie for gold? This obviously doesn’t happen that often since a lot of the timed events are decided by a tenth of a second, but it does happen. So they have to have a system for it. Which they do.
If two athletes tie for gold (which actually happened in the 2014 Winter Olympics for the Women’s Downhill Ski Final) they both get a gold medal, a silver isn’t given out, and the runner up gets the bronze.
If there is a tie for silver, same idea. First gets gold, second and third get silver. No bronze given out.
If there is a ties for bronze then both get the bronze medal and gold and silver are given out as normal.
I don’t believe there have been any ties in Tokyo yet this year… but now you know what happens if there is one.
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