With all the intense criticism over the environmental problems in Rio for the Olympics, the Olympic Committee decided to make the medal designs appropriate for the occasion. So the Rio Olympic medals will be Petri dishes filled with deadly bacteria, and wrapped with bands of gold, silver or bronze to keep them closed, sealing in the Pandora's Box of deadly contagion.
But it wouldn't be fair to have all the same levels of dangerousness for each medal, so gold medal winners will get the most deadly bacteria that kills instantly and horribly, silver medal winners will get bacteria that's deadly, but will take a few weeks to kill them, and bronze medal winners will get relatively benign bacteria that will make them very sick for weeks, but not actually kill them.
Ribbons for the medals will be bullet belts, to indicate all the crime we've been hearing about in the run-up to the 2016 games.
