Winter Olympics 2022 – Why are athletes given pandas not medals on the podium? Is it because of Covid?
Chances are you’ve been wondering why athletes are given cuddly pandas on the podium instead of medals at Beijing 2022. At the Tokyo Summer Olympics we became accustomed to the medals being dished out inside the stadium – albeit with athletes having to put medals around their own necks due to Covid risks – but that isn’t happening in Beijing. Ad/> Instead, medallists have received a fluffy mascot on the podium, as modelled by New Zealand’s snowboard sensation Zoi Sadowski-Synnott in the above video.
