Sorry Bone,

I noticed a few views but no responses, so I will step up. Rationalize as you will the results remain the same.

As of the end of day 9
USA 21 21 15 57
CHN 22 14 10 46
RUS 7 13 16 36
AUS 12 8 12 32
GER 10 9 12 31
Complete Medal Count

Yes, I see what you mean.
With 14 times the Australian population, the US can't even manage twice the medals.
Very hard to rationalise.
Why do you think they do so poorly?

Total medal count per head capita of country.

Australia kicks your yanky butts. It's not even a close contest. :P

you guys have 300million (approx) population to get (so far) 57 medals.

we have 20million and have (so far) 32 medals.

Basically us Aussie's have a much better success rate.

Yep you can say "look at the score board", but it takes you 15 times the population & no doubt a s#it load more $'s to find athletes good enough. :P lol'

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http://www.velokyniska.com

Medals per capita, brilliant. Why don't you calculate the best City as well?.

If your best events are first (swimming) would that skew the calculation?

Maybe there should be two classes so the small countries don't compete against the large ones.

That makes sense. They should change the number of athletes to be proportional to the countrys population. Than it will be better right? The US could displace other countries from bronze and such. Or even better, if you live and train in the US you CANNOT compete for another country. Hmm seems that many, many other countries would lose medals...

In other words your argument is silly

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JW (on the comback trail)

Your post highlights the difference between what the Olympics should be about and what it IS about.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

Swimming's over, and so, seemingly, would be Australia's no. 1 position. But very impressive, nonetheless.

I think the true medal count should be medals VS. Total amount of money spent on training for athletes.

Per capita doesn't really mean too much if you are throwing gobs of money into the system and can hire the BEST coaches.

M~

I agree - I'm all for the cheering for your compatriots, but the whole country vs country thing gets a bit tiring. It seems like our way a taking credit for a bunch of work we didn't do

'Course, it could be just sour grapes on my part, because Canada is well back however you count it. I just hope no one suggests making it by surface area, or we'd be really hurting.

Deke

Here we go again, more bashing americans, we win, your jealous, you criticize. Cant you go ride your bike or go swim with sharks instead of waisting your time on this pointless post? How is that softball team doing today?

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Kestrel Syndicate
Macca Fan Club

Yes mate, but for every Aussie with a six pack around their gut, we have 10 Yankees with a keg.

Deal.

Australia has really shown what can happen when you get all ducks in order and everyone working together to produce world-class results.

How does it work? It's pretty straight forward.

1) Sport development is a top commitment of the government

2) Involvement in sport development is of high importance with private business

3) There is genuine interest on the part of the media to cover many of the Olympic sports ALL the time - not just a two week coverage orgy every 4 years

4) There was a focus put on certain sports

Compare that to Canada - a country with a larger population but similar economic standards.

1) There have been huge cut-backs in govern ment funding of sports programs over the past 15 years

2) There is an alomost total lack of interset for private companies to get involved with Olympic sports

3) There is almost zero coverage of almost all Olympic sports in the media between Olympic Games

4) There has been no focus or commitment in one direction or another.

Our ( Canada's)Olympic sports results have been on a downhill slide for a number of years and there is considerable frustration over this Olympic Games which may be a worst ever showing. Despite all of the frustration, little has been done to change things. Indeed, the dismal showing in Athens was predicted in Sydney four years ago, but nothing has been done.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

How about adding in all of those athletes from around the world who chose to live and train in US. Loved that swimmer with the Cal swim cap!

A lot of the smaller or less economically-advantaged countries look at the Olympics as a way of pushing back against what they see as American hegemony on the world stage. They carefully choose what sports among their national federations (which work in close conjunction with the government) will receive the most funding and expertise. It's the so-called "low hanging fruit" effect in a lot of countries. Go after sports that they have either a natural or ingrained aptitude at, or pour dollars etc. into a sport in which they can get good at in a hurry.

The U.S. suffers from an embarassment of riches (all of it mightily deserved, though, from the people who work the longest hours of the week and have the highest productivity rates in the western countries), and it's hard to get a nation of 300 million people to all concentrate on a few select sports. We send the most athletes because we have the most athletes interested in the most sports. We don't have the government-national federations relationship that many of the smaller or less-economically advantaged countries develop. This can be both a blessing and a burden, but is one that we've chosen to live with in order not to deny freedom-of-choice to the individual who may choose to try, pretty much on his or her own in many of the more obscure (for the U.S.) sports in which we send athletes who probably have no chance of medaling.

Avery Brundage Kahuna

Isnt there a limited amount each country can send to each event that it QUALIFIES for?

The Olympics is about athletes and their journies not medal counts. I bet the athletes are more friendly with each other than we are. For instance I was really disappointed/sad that Paula Radcliffe didnt do well in the Marathon, im amercian shes british, but im a big fan, also a fan of craig walton, simon lessing, macca. Anyone know what happened to Paula?



USA, USA, USA, USA!!

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Kestrel Syndicate
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THe whole medal count is a little silly. How many medals are given out for various swimming events? A crapload. How many are given out for soccer, softball, volleyball, triathlon...etc. One.

So it's not only how strong a country is at Olympic sports - which sports make a huge difference in total medal count.

Of course I do like to look at the tally and see the US on top. But it hasn't meant that much to me since the Cold War ended. Sure hated to see those darn commies on top!

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Because we can't bring 14 times as many athletes? For most events, we're limited to the same number of athletes that Australia, more or less.

That's what makes this a bit of a bogus comparison. You trash talkin'?

That being said, I must admit that Australia generally punches above its weight in a number of areas. The one that I notice particularly is track cycling, where they do quite well, especially in the pursuit and time trial events (Meares gold in the 500 TT, McGee and Mactier silver in their pursuit events, Aussie Team Pursuit gold, USA didn't even qualify to send athletes to these events).

She held a press conference today, broke down at the Press conference and on the BBC, she does not know what went wrong, she said she had nothing left in her legs, she said she was drifting and could not run back to the center of the road.

I think the heat was just to much, she looked terrible, worse than I have ever seen her, uncomfortable and she is not blaming the conditions but she's much bigger than most of her competitors and she ran off of the front again which she did not need to do.

Kastor ran the smartest race, Nderaba looked good but the Japanese run let it all hang out and you have to respect that.

Sounds like the marathon course was relentless! Paula is still young, she can come back in 2008.

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what's surprising is that the conditions are fairly close to what you can get in Albuquerque where she often trains...
I was bummed...

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Rank Country Gold Silver Bronze Total 1 United States 23 25 17 65 2 China 23 15 12 50 3 Japan 15 8 8 31 4 Australia 13 9 13 35 5 France 9 7 9 25 6 Germany 8 10 11 29 7 Ukraine 8 2 5 15 8 Great Britain 7 8 7 22



And the athletics aren't even halfway through yet, I think top 50 is likely, MATE.

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"How bad can it be?" - SimpleS

I can't believe the marathon hasn't received more play on this forum. That was a hell of a race, and I found myself cheering for them all no matter where they were from. How brutal is that to watch your medal go running past you at the speed Kastor was running? Hell, had Philippides run 28 or 29 miles in 490 BC, Kastor would've had the gold! And did you notice how fresh she appeared afterward compared to the others? Amazing.

Now, being a non-runner, let me ask this. Do you think, once she's had time to ponder her achievment, that Kastor will have any regret for not starting her push sooner?

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Jim Manton / ERO Sports

Of course in most events there is a limited number of athletes a country can enter.

But the difference is the amount of athletes available who are capable for even qualifying for the Olympics.

In the 400m mens sprint the USA has 3 runners Australia has 2. Some countries have 1 or nobody capable.

The depth of athletes (in all sports) makes a huge difference. Our athletics program is very very small in comparison to the US.

More population means more participating numbers in those sports, which means highly likely that out of those numbers the competition level gets stronger. In some of these Olympic sports you may even have 20million people playing said sport. That is our population. We might have 50,000 people who participate in that same sport. Each country can enter 2 athletes. So whats the chances that out of 20 million you can find 2 that are pure world class. Much betters odds than finding them out of 50,000.

Look at New Zealand it is even harder for them they have a population of 4million, They now have 2 Gold medals & have taken a world record as well. It is even harder for them to find the numbers to participate in some of these sports, let alone develop them to world class standards & to Olympic victory.

It is harder for small countries to succeed because of the numbers game.

Track cycling, Yes we are very strong and the US is very weak.

Why is that? Most likely we have a much better track cycling program and with the successes over the years that program gets better funding. In Australia those medals are very very important to the sport because they get their fundings based on success. The swimmers are successful so they get the best funding to develop their sport. It's all relative.

Some one mention Jealous of the US medal count.

Hardly, I would doubt there is 1 person in Australia who is jealous of the US medal count.

We are proud of the successes of our athletes.



How is the softball going?

softball is not really a big sport in Australia, yet we still manage to have a good strong team and to get through to the gold medal match is brilliant. And a small note, the Australian team was the only team capable of scoring a run against the US. Yes the US are good at that sport no doubt.

How did the the US 4000m team pursuit go???

you haven't even got a team that qualified.



Just a note, that I am not bagging the US, just putting some numbers down to put it in persective.

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http://www.velokyniska.com

This is an interesting thread, and it really brings out the fun and games that nationalism brings with it.

Having said this, as an Australian i am extremely proud of the results that my country's representatives have earnt, and for a country that doesn't rank in the top 50 in population (according to 2002 figures, we're 51st) we are clearly doing quite well.

We, of course, have many advantages as a developed first world nation, like many others who are also doing well on the medal tally. No surprises there.

What surprises me, however, is the constant misconceptions and generalisations people have about various places. From what I have read, many slowtwitchers from the States and Canada think that Australia funnels all its talent into olympic sports through some sophisticated communist style system of sports development. This just isn't true. Most talented males end up playing footy of one sort or another (that's where the $ are). I imagine this talent drain to big money sports is the same in all countries where there is the opportunity for economic advancement through sport - after all look at Kenya.

In any case, this Aussie who lives on the coast (we all do after all, it's a long coastline) had better go wrestle a croc (well my bit of coast is a mangrove swamp - couldn't afford a beach) and then ride my kangaroo to work (it's true you know).