A Japanese Olympic gold medalist will be given a new medal for a very odd reason -- the athlete's hometown mayor put the original inside his mouth.
Tokyo Games organizers said Miu Goto, a pitcher on Japan's champion softball team, will get a new gold medal after Nagoya City Mayor Takashi Kawamura chomped on her medal during an event celebrating her victory, Yahoo! Sports reported Friday.
Japan beat the United States in the softball final.
Kawamura sparked online anger when he lowered his face covering and bit on the thing. He was castigated on social media for "lacking respect" and ignoring pandemic safety protocols.
The mayor apologized for the blunder, which reportedly prompted more than 7,000 complaints to city officials.
He said he forgot his position as mayor and acted in an "extremely inappropriate" way.
"Germ medal" soon started to trend on Japanese social media, with users saying the act was "unhygienic" and "impolite" towards the Olympian.
"I am really sorry that I hurt the treasure of the gold medalist," the 72-year-old Kawamura said.
The medal was not disfigured, although the mayor offered to pay for the cost of producing a new one.
Some Olympians also bashed Kawamura and said they value their medals like treasures and that it was disgraceful for the public official to clamp his teeth into one.
"I'd cry if that happened to me," Naohisa Takato, a Japanese gold medalist in judo, commented on Twitter.
Takato said he would handle his gold medal very "gently not to scratch it."
Even Japanese car company Toyota, which sponsors Goto's Toyota Red Terriers club team, felt gross about Kawamura's actions, calling it "extremely regrettable."
According to Yahoo Sports' Jack Baer, biting Olympic medals is a common practice.
It dates back to its use as a quick "stress" test of sorts of the gold coin's genuineness. But most often, it's the athletes who won the medal who makes the bite, not the other way around.
Goto reportedly thought about keeping the "compromised" medal but eventually agreed to the offer by the International Olympic Committee of a replacement.
The IOC said it would take care of the costs.
