Congratulations are due to both the USA and Australian national teams who at the end of day 10 are both looking good in the ‘real’ (per capita) medal tally.
Australia is comfortably in first place, up from the fourth place in which they finished in Sydney 2000.
USA is in fourteenth place, well up from the 46th they finished with in 2000.
Can Oz hold 1st place? Here’s hoping. Can USA hang in for a top 20? They’ll be sure to give it a try.
Will Great Britain feature in the top 50? It’s not currently looking likely.
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?
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…
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.
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?
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.
Sport development is a top commitment of the government
Involvement in sport development is of high importance with private business
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
There was a focus put on certain sports
Compare that to Canada - a country with a larger population but similar economic standards.
There have been huge cut-backs in govern ment funding of sports programs over the past 15 years
There is an alomost total lack of interset for private companies to get involved with Olympic sports
There is almost zero coverage of almost all Olympic sports in the media between Olympic Games
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.
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.
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?
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!
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?
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.
Will Great Britain feature in the top 50? It’s not currently looking likely.
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.
