Chinese Gymnast Zhou Yaqin Biting Medal

About

Chinese Gymnast Zhou Yaqin Biting Medal, also known as Chinese Athlete and Italia Olympians Biting Medals, refers to a viral video in which the Chinese gymnast Zhou Yaqin looked over to her Italian gymnastics rivals, saw them biting their medals, and quickly followed suit, raising the silver medal to her mouth. The moment was captured in the 2024 Summer Paris Olympics, going viral in early August 2024, sparking jokes and used as an image macro meme on X / Twitter and Reddit.

Origin

On August 5th, 2024, Chinese Gymnast Zhou Yaqin^[1] won a silver medal in the women’s balance beam event. At the podium, she was alongside the Italians Alice D’Amato and Manila Esposito, who bit their medals for a photo. Yaqin quickly followed the Italians, raising the silver medal to her mouth. The moment was massively shared on X^[2], including the post made by user @Jamin2g (seen below), who captioned the video with "Zhou Yaqin had absolutely no idea what was happening and was just happy to be there." The post amassed over 8 million views and 137,000 likes in two days.

Spread

The wholesome moment sparked a series of jokes and memes inspired by Yaqin's actions. For instance, on August 7th, 2024, X^[3] page @OlympicsContext uploaded an image showing the Chinese gymnastic reaction (seen below, left), which amassed more than 275,000 likes and 15,000 reposts in a few hours. On August 5th, 2024, French artist @vincenthuon posted an illustration inspired by the biting medal moment (seen below, right), which received over 396,000 likes and 42,000 reposts in two days.

Various Examples

[work in progress]

Search Interest

External References