I thought this was interesting. It's the official medal count "per capita."

But if you take the standard you applied to China and apply it to all countries, the US isn't doing so well. Australia has, what, 20 million people? Less than a tenth as many people, but only half as many medals. Not bad, even if many of them do train here.

Bah, see what happens when I wait too long before hitting 'post'? Ryan beat me to it!

It is VERY interesting, I agree. What is it about our culture that has helped foster such competitive atheletes?

One of the MOST striking stories, in my opinion, of this Olympics is Mohini Bhardwaj's story. Having to live at the poverty level so that she had enough time to train, eating power bars all the time because she could not afford too much more, and finally being supported by Pamela Anderson, who wrote her a $20,000 check.

Good stuff!

DAvid

No doubt that Australia has an impressive olympics program. More power to them.

David

thanks guys, and absolutely, Aussies rule - part of it is the impetus of having hosted the Games in '00, but they have always been excellent.

A large part of what draws athletes here is the level of competition of our intercollegiate system, but our professional team sports draw the best from all over the world as well

I'm not at all impressed with Austrailia. If anything the US should automatically be given the bronze by default in many events in addition to competeing for gold and silver.

Both the men's and women basketball teams as well as soccer, softball and many others is replete with athletes who have been taught and learned their sport through the American system. They come here and for the most part get a free education, play colleigate sports and then go pro only to return ten or so years later to play for an opposing country. It seems like the US is doing just about everything for the world. Example: when the USA womens basketball team plays the Aussies on Saturday they will be going against the WNBA's player of the year last year.

The womens soccer, softball and basketball team should be given the bronze in addition to their Gold. What next lay down or throw a game to avoid embarrassing or hurting another countries feelings?

Dominance in sports is just one more example of why the U.S. is the greatest country on earth.

Oh, and if you don't agree, shut your pie hole before we bomb your lame asses!

Dawn said it best.

That Korean gymnast can go lick his wounds. Hail to Paul Hamm, Jenny Finch, Lisa Leslie, Mia Hamm and even Allen Iverson.

What I found heartening was the tremendous amount of booing of the U.S. at events, widely reported overseas but of course ignored here. It's good to see the Greeks have an accurate view of the U.S. government.

I actually think the way it is now is about ideal: as long as we win the medal count it's very politic to spread the wealth around and allow our insidious influence to permeate the earth semi-subtly. It IS embarrassing when our teams screw up in baseball or basketball, but it's up to us to put together better teams in those circumstances

Oh and the womens gymnastic team. They all have such pretty round butts.

they are perky little pixies

most of the booing has been against judging, or at the men's 200m dash where the Greek favorite was missing because he blew off another drug test

Comment#10"What I found heartening was the tremendous amount of booing of the U.S. at events, widely reported overseas but of course ignored here. It's good to see the Greeks have an accurate view of the U.S. government."


No they were just angry because their steroid juiced runner couldn't make it because of a "motorcycle accident". Yeahhhh, an accident. Fuck'em we went 1,2,3 GOLD SILVER AND BRONZE and "made it official like a referee with a whistle" and hush their lame asses.

"most of the booing has been against judging, or at the men's 200m dash where the Greek favorite was missing because he blew off another drug test"

Wrong. There was massive booing of the U.S. at the opening ceremonies (carefully muted by NBC), owing to its loathesome foreign policies and its about-to-be-re-elected monarch.

nice post - but I suspect you'll find this is an argument no one will ever win. I tend to agree with those who 'disagree' above. Once we start unravelling things like population we find the US could perhaps more accurately be placed as 35th according to the ABS Population based Medal Table (as of day 13). Another interesting way of thinking about it is taking into consideration the Economy of the countries concerned.

Of course the Aussies won't be as excited about this one cause it ranks them down at 21 (the US is 51st and Canada 52nd) according to thisMedal Table that takes into consideration Country's GDP.

I tend to like this medal table because it reminds us that so many countries that are competing just don't have the resources that many of us take for granted. I was reminded of this when I saw the Afghani runner the other day who barely seemed to even own a 'proper' running kit.

To be honest I'm a bit over the beating of chests that many of us in the west have been doing over the Olympics - I wonder if we've lost something of what the true spirit of the Olympics could have been.

Just my humble opinion.

Wow, if you go by that medal count linked to in Comment 1, India's Olympic record looks amazingly bad.

But when Indians move to the U.S...

Thanks for the link Darren.

My point was simply that there are an extraordinary number of athletes who live and/or train in the U.S. who are competing for other countries, and if you were to take that into account, American domination would be almost embarrassing. And this fact is something like the elephant in the room that is obvious from following the games on TV, but is never addressed directly.

The economic argument is valid and interesting but doesn't explain anomalies like Cuba, Jamaica, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, that do much better than would be expected from the economic analysis.

And I agree that all those countries on the medal tally with zero medals flies in the face of the Olympic spirit. I propose a fourth tally for appearing in the finals, a huge victory for those who have never won anything. Get on it, chart dude.

nice idea on the forth category - unfortunately it aint going to happen this year. With only two days to go and having lived on Athens time for two weeks I'm in no condition to code it :-)

Have been blogging 14 hours a day between 5pm and 7am every night....

arrrggghhh

I wasn't serious about that before the end of the Games, but a reconstruction after the fact might be very interesting, and a running tally for the next time around would be something I bet the bottomdwellers would enjoy and appreciate. That would help invalidate Costas's statement at the Opening that the parade of athletes is the highlight of the Games for most countries.

But of course so-called Dream Team is now out of the running for a gold medal.

But I think, A communist athletics system surrounded by poverty is much less effective than a capitalist one where many millions of people can afford their own coach.

China can't really be called communist anymore, although it is still very authoritarian. Cuba and North Korea are about the last holdouts

With way too much free time, I came up with my own system. I couldn't understand how Michael Phelps can go home with so many golds around his neck after swimming a 120 second heat, semi and final, while team sports play 3 or four games in the pool rounds, a quarter final, semi and then the final, with games that go for more than an hour, and only be awarded one gold? Using ATHENS2004.com and way too much spare time, I went through the best preforming nations in each sport. The results did come out to be pretty interesting. Sure, China and US are always going to dominate, but its interesting to see what happens when only one medal is awarded for US's 12 in swimming. Can some countries really be called the best if they dominate just one sport?


How it works Each sport is granted one gold, one silver and one bronze.
The aim is to put things into perspective, especially where events such as atheletics have 45 golds on offer
while team sports like football only offer one or two.
This way, sports like swimming, which had 32 gold medals, gets only one
and countries like USA, which got 12 gold medals in the pool, gets only one.
This shows how some countries gain all their medals from only a few sports
And that if, for example, football and basketball offered the same number of medals as Fencing,
Argentina could be potentially be in the same position as Italy (8th) rather than 36th

Place Country Real Placing Gold Silver Bronze Total Placing by Medals
1 China 2 5 1 1 7 3
2 USA 1 4 4 2 10 1
3 Germany 6 3 1 0 4 -7
4 Russia 3 2 1 2 5 -4
5 Cuba 15 2 0 0 2 -11
6 Romania 13 2 0 0 2 -11
7 Australia 4 1 5 2 8 2
8 Great Britain 9 1 2 2 5 -4
9 Korea 11 1 2 1 4 -7
10 Japan 5 1 1 3 5 -4
11 Brazil 21 1 1 1 3 -9
12 Italy 8 1 1 1 3 -9
13 Argentina 36 1 1 0 2 -11
14 Chinese Taipea 30 1 0 1 2 -11
15 Chile 38 1 0 0 1 -18
16 New Zealand 24 1 0 0 1 -18
17 Hungary 12 0 1 1 2 -11
18 Austria 27 0 1 0 1 -18
19 Belgium 49 0 1 0 1 -18
20 France 7 0 1 0 1 -18
21 Turkey 23 0 1 0 1 -18
22 Spain 19 0 0 2 2 -11
23 Thailand 25 0 0 2 2 -11
24 DPR Korea 56 0 0 1 1 -18
25 Greeece 14 0 0 1 1 -18
26 Hong Kong 65 0 0 1 1 -18
27 Netherlands 17 0 0 1 1 -18
28 Slovakia 29 0 0 1 1 -18
29 Ukraine 10 0 0 1 1 -18
30 Uzbekastan 37 0 0 1 1 -18
Interesting to note Norway came 16th overall, but failed to place in the top three of any sport.
Argentina placed 36th overall, but was the best country in Football and second in Basketball.
France was Seventh overall, but managed to only come second in Fencing

These calculations were made to my best efforts, however mistakes may have been made.
I also combined the three disciplines of Gynastic, Canoeing and Cycling
They were also calculated before all results in Athletics, Volleyball and Waterpolo were decided.
Please send me your comments at namenotrequired@hotmail.com , especially if you find any errors or other ideas I could use.
Thanks, Lucas. From a hole somewhere in Australia.

thanks Lucas, very interesting concept - I think it shows that there are large discrapancies in medal potential based upon what events you concentrate on as a country