- 6 Aug 08, 11:18 AM
Beijing
When the People's Republic of China decided to make its summer Olympics debut at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, nobody was more relieved than the Americans.
Having led a boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, the Americans were staring down the barrel of a huge tit-for-tat riposte from the Communist Bloc.
But by going to California, the Chinese spiked the Soviet guns, saved the Games as a contest and ensured its financial success. For Peter Ueberroth, the chairman of LA's organising committee, it was even simpler than that: China had rescued the Olympics.
Now, six Games later, the Chinese want their reward and staging the Games is not enough, they want to win.
Medal table triumph as metaphor for economic, military and political muscle seems a very Cold War concept but it appears nobody has told the hosts; or the Americans, for that matter.
Having finally seen off the Soviet Union and East Germany (the USSR and its team of "shamateurs" won six of the nine summer Olympics it contested), the US was looking forward to a lengthy spell on top.
The margin of America's advantage at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta seemed to scream, "Get stuffed Stalin, we've won!"
Well, they had. The world's only remaining superpower, the US was citius, altius, fortius than anybody else and intended to stay that way. China, however, had other plans.
That first Chinese team in 1984 won 32 medals, 15 gold. It was a good haul for a bunch of novices from a country that didn't get out much. But then there were lots of good hauls that year, thanks to the Soviet no-show. The Americans won 83 gold medals.
China found the going tougher in 1988 - just five golds, the same as Britain - but was back on LA form in 1992 and 1996, winning 16 golds both times.
Still, there was nothing here to worry mighty America with its 44 golds in Atlanta, was there?
Perhaps not...or perhaps not yet, because come the new millennium it was clear a (not-so) new power was awakening in the East. The Sydney Games saw China jump to 28 golds, only 10 fewer than the US.
Four years later in Athens, and China, for whom anything other than gold is defeat, was breathing down Uncle Sam's neck in second place with just four fewer gold medals.
It is small wonder that one forecaster, Professor Simon Shibli from Sheffield Hallam University, has the hosts streaking past the Yanks in Beijing.
He's not alone. Another forecast, this time from bean counters PricewaterhouseCoopers, predicted the Chinese would pip the Americans in the overall medal count 88 to 87 - the US had a 39-medal advantage in Athens.
So how have they done it?
Well, for something so unprecedented, it's actually quite simple. It's what Peter Cook's football manager Alan Latchley might have described as the "three Ms": motivation, money and millions.
The motivation comes from a mixture of patriotism (which is hardly unique to China), financial incentives from the state (again, not an exclusively Chinese phenomenon) and a desire for vindication on the world stage.
Face, or how you save it, is a big thing in China, perhaps the biggest thing. It might seem strange to Westerners but for many Chinese these Games are an opportunity to save face after four centuries of humiliation, often at Western hands. The international protests surrounding the torch relay only reinforced this view.
The money should speak for itself. By most measures, China now has the fourth largest economy in the world. It is on target to overtake the US as the world's largest economy in the next 30 years.
The country's poverty rate is down from 53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001, the year China was awarded the Games and it was admitted to the World Trade Organisation - talk about a twin assault on America's authority.
And the millions are self-evident. With a population of more than 1.3 billion and growing, there are more than enough sporty types from which to assemble a squad.
In 2006, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) estimated China had 185,184 young athletes in training at 1,782 specialist sports schools. As USOC's head of sports performance Steve Roush said recently: "You start doing the math and that's what keeps me up at night."
He didn't need to add that those young athletes were being pushed to near breaking point by remorseless coaches, often hired from nations with a reputation for taking chemical shortcuts; the American media usually does that without any prompting.
An internet search on the subject of the medal table match-up throws up numerous American articles on how the Chinese are trawling their young for potential champions, packaging them off to secretive sports factories to be turned into medal-winning automatons.
Fair comment or getting your excuses in early?
You will also find plenty of references to China's attempts in the 1990s to become a power on the track and in the pool. The shadow cast by Ma Junren's "turtle soup"-fuelled distance runners and their HGH-smuggling swimming counterparts is one the Chinese are still labouring under.
But while it may be true the Chinese authorities want this victory a little too much, there are martinet coaches (and pushy parents) all over the world, pain is a given for all would-be winners and the Americans haven't really got a leg to stand on when it comes to doping.
And China's rapid progress on the Olympic stage has not just been a numbers game. Not in a classic sense anyway. They've been quite cute too.
The Chinese authorities got their thinking caps on the minute they received the nod from the International Olympic Committee in 2001.
The result was "Project 119", a systematic push for champions in five medal-rich sports the country had struggled in at previous Games: athletics, canoeing/kayaking, rowing, sailing and swimming.
Wins in these sports (which now account for 122 chances to win gold out of a total of 302) would be added to the almost certain victories China would claim in badminton, diving, gymnastics, shooting, table tennis and weighlifting - traditional sources of success the Chinese had almost maxed out on. There is every chance of complete sweeps for the hosts in at least two of those events this summer.
The Chinese won one gold medal in the "Project 119" sports in 2000 and four in 2004. They will much more than that in Beijing.
The plan, however, has not been a complete success.
The sailors have improved and will have home advantage helping them to wins in the light winds of Qingdao. But canoeing/kayaking has proved a tougher nut to crack and coach Joseph Capousek was sacked earlier this year for not delivering the required progress.
Capousek, who had coached German paddlers to 18 Olympic golds across four Games, left acrimoniously, claiming the Chinese were pushing too hard, putting too much pressure on their athletes.
The rowers, on the other hand, have made huge strides, particularly in women's events. The American magazine Sports Illustrated recently tipped China to take five golds and a silver at the rowing lake, a stunning result for a country which has never won an Olympic rowing gold before.
Athletics and swimming, as previously mentioned, have been far more problematic for China. The two biggest sports at the Games, in terms of medals available and public profile, are US strongholds. Half of all the many Olympic medals the Americans have won since 1896 have come from the pool and track.
Chinese hopes in these two sports rest (as success of the entire Games appear to at times) on the slight shoulders of Liu Xiang, the hurdler who won China's first ever athletics gold in Athens.
They have high hopes for the women's marathon too, and they may pick up a medal or two in the Aquatics Cube, but when one American swimmer might win eight golds on his own it is uneven battle in these two sports.
In fact, this clash of sporting cultures will take place without many hand-to-hand skirmishes. Much will be made of the few occasions they do go one-on-one (Yao Ming v the Dream Team, for example) but these contests will be rare, unlike the numerous surrogate scraps the Cold War rivalry threw up.
No, this race, which the bookies think the Chinese should edge, will be settled by which nation harvests more medals from its most fertile events. Events in the Olympic backwaters of the shooting and weightlifting venues will decide this competition, not who wins the basketball.
For their part, the Chinese can't seem to decide if they are heading for glorious vindication or not. At times, they sound like school kids who think they've just aced a test only to hear what somebody else wrote down - doubts creep in, expectations are re-managed, rivals are described as giants.
Does any of this matter, though? If China's athletes do deliver the glory their political masters desire, is it curtains for the US? Will that signal the end of the American century?
No, of course not. They're just games. It's not really war without weapons. But it should be fun to watch from the sidelines.
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It's simple really. The Chinese have invested an inordinate amount of money in peripheral minority events in which there is no true global competition, in a manner similar to our strategy in 2012 and at this Olympics.
The athletics and swimming, with view exceptions, are where you garner prestige. However, it does baffle me as to why we seem to have such a woeful ROI.
And why oh why is the Olympics tab on the BBC sport so content-scarce. There's more on the British team on NBCOlympics.com than our own national broadcaster, whom we are forced to support.
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Can anyone tell me what the phrase "citius, altius, fortius" means? When I put it into an online translator it came out as "speedily, domestic fattened bird, perhaps". Not too sure what that has to do with the Olympics (unless you're referring to a few of the more 'wholesome' female shot putters)?
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Faster, Higher, Stronger
In the case of the USA team it might as well translate as
Coke, Macdonalds, NBC
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faster, higher, stronger.
Britainis putting more funding into areas they have traditionally done well in and are not targetting areas like weightlifting/shooting/handball
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Depends who has a better doping program. The Russians seems to fail on this count, so I am looking forward to see, which country is the best follower of East Germany.
I guess they just have to allow EPO and human growth hormone. The tests to detect them do not work anyway.
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Other potential battlefields are:
Gymastics
Beach Volleyball
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China has over 4 times the population of the USA - they should easily win the medals haul. Indeed if the USA comes even close to China then then surely the Chinese have failed big time to exploit their massive advantage.
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Does anyone outside the fanatics, really care who wins the most medals.
If our people win, great. If they don't, so what, at the end of the day, win or lose, it will do nothing to improve things in this country. I know that should our team do well the government will claim a feel good factor and hope it will paper over the cracks of their total incompetence.
They will also hope that we'll stop noticing the soaring cost of funding Tony Blairs ego trip in hosting the next farce. The rest the UK will be funding the necessary improvements to London's infrastructure for years to come.
The Olympic Games lost their way years ago and are litle more than a parody of the original intent.
When you see some of the "sports" that are or have been included it has become little more than an expensive circus.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
"Faster, Higher, Stronger
In the case of the USA team it might as well translate as
Coke, Macdonalds, NBC"
Surely Coke should be in the middle of those three.
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"Who ever uses the most steriods of course thats what usally works just ask Carl Lewis and Flo Jo"
Carl Lewis never used steroids. He used additives that are now banned that were not banned when he performed.
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Woodhatchboys,
You suggest that there is a strategy in the GB team to spend 'an inordinate amount of money in peripheral minority events in which there is no competition'.
Our 2 most successful sports in recent times are rowing and cycling. Rowing is one of the first olympic sports and has the oldest governing body of any olympic sport, and cycling is a huge participation sport and hardly counts as a minority event in which there is no competition! I dont think your cynicism around the effort of team GB is warranted
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2008 Olympics is just the prelude to the 2009 Ashes.
Who cares about the China / USA contest at the top of the ladder. Let's see how Britain and Australia compete. That's the really satisfying contest ...
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cwj1976 said: "If, as some suggest, the recent Chinese successes have been due to some sort of unseemly activity, I really hope the Olympic authorities are on top of it and are brave enough to let the world know. It'll be a great games and as usual I expect the US to show that they are still well and truly on top."
In like manner, if US success is due to any sort of unseemly activity, I really hope the Olympic authorities are on top of it and are brave enough to let the world know. It'll be a great games and as usual I expect China to show that they are now well and truly on top.
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China!
A simple question that deserves
a simple answer!
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Has anyone ever worked out the medals table from the perspective of population size and perhaps GDP, now surely, that would be the great leveler!
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Well spotted Andi. The comment I wrote was bull. I wrote it because my previous comment had been censored and felt like highlighting the fact that it had been. This one may be too. This is what I actually wrote originally:
I am amazed at how xenophobic the BBC's reporting of the Chinese Olympics has been. The corporation seems to be implying that the Chinese team seem to be justifiably accused of taking drugs to cheat and of cheating in general, bit least due to ?unsavoury links? to former Eastern Bloc trainers of whom it is also implied that they have been cheats.
There is also a general acceptance that what the Chinese are good at are not worthwhile sports and that their success is due to an unsavoury crippling effort (something applauded in Western athletes), drugs or simply numerical advantage.
We don't point out the obvious facts - ie, that US and USSR dominance has also been partly due to numerical advantage, occasional spectacular examples of drug-taking and numerical advantage.
As has already been pointed out by other bloggers, some American athletes at the highest level (see, for example, Justin Gatland and Marion Jones) have been caught and will probably continue to be caught taking drugs without being forced by the state etc. Obviously, American advantage is strongly based in population size and wealth also.
There are then the almost comical insults Auntie has reported (albeit in a sort of ?some people say?? type of way. Ie. gossip rather than news ? which is endemic in the channel). Such reports suggest that the Chinese government is making what they say are normally rude, mean Chinese people/officials smile instead of being nasty.
And then the silly stories like making poor Chinese people dress in decent clothing and stop spitting so that the world won't laugh at them or disgusted by them.
I'm white and British. I've spent time in China and can confirm that they're athletic, hardworking, fun-loving, friendly people like the rest of us. They want their country to do well and are proud. Good for them. The Beeb?s reporting stinks of amateurish xenophobia and misplaced loyalty to Britain and the West. It's not East v West, Communist v Capitalist. It's the Olympics. It's sport. Grow up. China is doing well. Let's applaud their hard work instead of jealously condemning them for it.
Equality will come with time as it did to a certain extent in our country. And it doesn?t matter a fig who tops the medal charts ? especially with the number of cheats there are in general. I?d also like to say running fast over 100m is no greater than sailing a boat or shooting an arrow or playing badminton just because it?s more popular or old.
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I think the US will come out on top, but it will be very very close.
How does everyone think this games will rate amongst the greatest ever?
http://www.competitiveurge.com/greatest_olympics_ever
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About unseemly activities -- in Britain there's probably the same thing going on on an industrial scale as well. Consider this: a year ago their cyclists were nowhere. This year they suddenly win all across the board. I shudder to think what will be taking place in the run-up to the London Olympics.
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Wouldn't be surprised to see China edge the US in medals... I live just outside DC and hardly anyone could care any less about the olympics around here. For China, this is a huge, huge deal, hosting the games, and being a rising superpower. For americans, it's just another olympic games, which will probably be soiled by more doping charges when it's all said and done.
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bdaleboy makes a good point. I tip Jamaica to have the best medal tally in terms of population and GDP, what with domination of the sprints and sprint related field events.
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Well said cwj1976. Typical of the British Broadcasting Corporation over the last few years. I used to believe that the BBC were the last bastion of impartial reporting - no more I fear. Britain - and the rest of the Western world - have nothing to be proud of when it comes to doping athletes. But this is, as always, brushed under the carpet when it is easier to undermine developing nations. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones....
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It is interesting to note that in 1988 Olympics- a country, far tinier than the USA and with a much smaller population, won more medals than the United States :--namely : East Germany with 102 medals, as against USA with 94 medals. How do you explain that? Matter of fact, more medals have been won by Germanic countries(East and West Germany combined) than the USA in three Olympics : in 1972 (E.+W. Germany : 106 medals, USA 94 Medals), in 1976 (E.+W. Germany : 129 medals, USA 94 Medals), and in 1988 (E.+W. Germany : 142 medals, USA 94 Medals).
India, by contrast, with (near or over a billion) population, wins 1 medal,in most Olympics . So a large population of India has been,as yet, of no help in earning more medals.
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I suspect that the Chinese coaches are under particular pressure to make sure that their athletes not only win but are clean, given that a couple of failed drugs tests could result in a major loss of 'face' for the whole team. That makes things difficult, for various reasons! So I would tip the USA to continue their winning run.
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Hmm n c very interesting comment that - British cyclists were nowhere prior to the last year? Really? Absolute rubbish.
Actually Great Britain has finished top of the medal tables at the last FOUR world track championships.
They have won Olympic titles in the last two Olympics, Boardman won one in 1992. There were previous wins prior to this.
The main reason why Britain is doing better is at last the cyclists are getting financial backing - if you don't like it then tough.
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The battle between USA and China could be very close - not sure how that will go. There might be a couple of medals in it.
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I agree that after 1996, China is becoming a rising athletic power. But prior to that the Olympic Super athletes have been mostly:-
1.Americans, 2. Russians 3. Germans --in that order, in terms of medal winners.
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Surely the comparison between countries cannot be remotely fair unless the medal counts are divided by the population, The biggest single factor which makes it likely the Chinese will win the largest number of medals at the current Olympics is that they have a population of 1.3 billion + -- whereas the USA has less than 400,000. That is a ratiio of more than 3 to 1. So, even if the US gets roughly the same number of medals as China it will have done remarkably well. And don't foget that a country such as new Zealand -- with a very small population -- often does remarkably well with a population normalized score.
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re. #18 bdaleboy:
Hah! The Australian newspapers all show the medal count per capita every day during the Olympics, for obvious reasons. But you have hit on what would be the most interesting metric for comparison: medals per proportion of GDP spent on the national Olympic team. I have never seen that one reported, probably because Jamaica and the Bahamas haven't taken an interest in the question. It certainly wouldn't show the US and China in a favourable light and us poor Aussies would vanish from the table altogether since we certainly spend the most relative to the size of our economy of anyone.
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The 27 EU countries should add all their medals together and treat ourselves as one competitor - like the USA does with its 50 States or like the old USSR used to with all its constituent parts (even though some, like Ukraine and Belarus had separate UN seats at the time). If you go back over the recent Olympics you'll see that EU 'won' more medals than China, Russia and USA put together.
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EU Olympic Committees should get together -as the old USSR, Ukraine and Belarus Olympic Committees did from 1948 till 1988 and as the North and South korea Olympic Committees did in 1988. They should field one unified EU team. If you examine the Medal tables since 1960 the united EU has come top every time. And in 2004 -with 27 States- would have won more medals than China, Russia and the US combined!
What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose!
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Well said, cwj1976! I do not think, however, that this sort of attitude is BBC-specific. As a foreigner living in the UK, I have come across xenophobia nearly on a daily basis. It is part of British culture but has changed in recent years, has become more 'pc', if you pardon the oxymoron. I find it ridiculous, for example, when a Russian is being interviewed, and the English voice-over comes with a strong Russian accent. How patronising!
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Whats this whoo-ha about 'saving face' ... saving face is important for chinese? Saving face is another interpretation as having having "Pride".
Proud of your self, proud of your achievements, proud of your family, proud of your nation, proud of your dignity.
Englishmen are not proud of themselves? Proud of their achievements? Proud of their nations? Would one like to go an event and be served with left over food or go to an event and be served with fresh and quality food?
When Nadal steps on the tennis courts whether its wimbledon or in davis cup or olympics i believe he wants to win. Because as a tennis player he plays to win. And that is why he is a winner. He does not say hey, today i am playing for spain, today i am playing for myself. BUT I am a winner and i play to win.
It is very normal that when you have won 1 gold medal you want to win 2 gold medals next time. And when you have won 2 gold medals you want to win 3. It has got nothing to do with China, Vietnam, Cuba, or USA. This is human nature.
What determines peripheral minority events and what does not? I mean more then 3 quarter of the world population do not even swim. So what makes swimming more prestigious then equestrian?
The Chinese are happy to have been given the olympic games and they want to show the world they can host an important event.
Which country when given the games did not make investments in trying to win medals and provide and try to host an unforgettable event? Just China?
Have some objective reporting please!
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The chinese have always put a lot of unneccesary pressure on their athletes. They make their athletes train at least ten hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The chinese have a saying "What takes ten years in the west only takes three years in China" and that is why they train their athletes to become near super human. They are putting those athletes to breaking point. I feel sorry for those athletes.
I therefore think the International Olympic Committee should do something to help those chinese athletes
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As it turns out, you are all wrong, and the premise of the question is wrong. From a sporting perspective, this Olympics is not really a contest between the USA and China, not Russia, not the EU and not even little powerhouse Australia. All that the Olympic success of those nations demonstrates is that, if you have the money to spend and the vanity, you can buy yourself a bunch of medals.
No, the true Olympic story has to be about triumph in the face of adversity. So, to see who the real champions are, we need some way to factor out the huge disparities in economic power that some countries direct toward buying their way to the top of the medals chart. Ideally, we would divide the medals total by some proportionate measure of how much each country spends on its Olympic team. But, since those numbers are not available, the best available approximation is GDP. When ranked by medals per
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(Oops I posted before I was done)
So, here are the top 10 countries from Athens 2004, ranked according to total medal counts divided by GDP:
1. Eritrea
2. Ethiopia
3. Georgia
4. Belarus
5. Cuba
6. Mongolia
7. Azerbaijan
8. Jamaica
9. Bulgaria
10. Kenya
When available econonomic resources are factored out, China and the USA are not even competitive (coming in 41st and 69th, respectively).
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you cant say the population of china is 1.3 billion and america is 400 million therefore america has done better if it wins 1/3 of the medals of china.
would that mean if a country with a population of, say, 1000 produced one gold medal they would have the best sporting infrastructure in the world. Or the best drugs as some real happy folk on here like to believe
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Re. #41 by U12856252
You would seem to have it exactly wrong. To find out which country has the greatest athletes, you have to remove the biggest cheating factors. I would say that's available economic resources (drugs almost surely covary with that), while most of my country folk would say its population. Either way, you have to give the Horn of Africa its due. So now the only real question is how badly Eritrea and Ethiopa will smoke the USA and China in Beijing.
Talk about losing face! Go Eritrea!
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The chinese olympic organisation never set a medal target. The chinese government never set a medal target.
Its people like Matt Slater working in the media writes and analyses and make assumptions about this and that. It sells papers and news makes money. We all need to make a living you know ??
As for training athletes to death and that has been reported. Well there are so many people in the world with views about this articles then surely there would be differing views about what Constitute training athletes to the very extreme or torture.
Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Fed Express. and for example Maria sharaprova went to USA from Russia at age 6 to learn to play tennis, people make sacrifices to reach the top. What and how do you constitute as feeling sorry for chinese athletes ? I feel sorry for these tennis players who didnt have a normal childhood and now are making million of dollars??? Well are they sorry they are making millions???
Now are these people mentioned chinese or is it a man kind phenomenon and not a nationality phenomenon ??
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Hi AMWBen, you seem quite upset about all this and that's fair enough, but are you sure you've actually read what I wrote. Where do I talk about a Chinese medal target? I'm absolutely positive there is a medal target but I don't mention it in this article and I'm fairly sure the Chinese authorities would never admit to having one or release it for public consumption....it would create a rod for their own backs. And you're naive if you think the Chinese authorities aren't completely serious about winning the medal table. This whole event is about politics.
I also didn't talk about minority periphery events, that was the first poster.
Neither did I suggest there was anything wrong about targeting success or investing heavily to do so....that's Olympic sport these days - a point many of the other posters have realised and commented on.
And you're wrong about "face" being the same as the western concept of "pride". They have that too, don't worry, particularly in their country, city, family etc etc. But losing/saving "face" is slightly different.
Oh, and the analyses you refer to (I'm assuming you're talking about the medal table projections), aren't mine. They're academics'/other newspapers'......I'm commenting on them, yes, but I conclude by saying:
"Does any of this matter.....no, of course not. They're just games."
DirkThMarmoset - Some interesting stuff there, I like the GDP-based medals table but I see a few flaws in there. First, because we're only talking about a few medals here for the really poor countries, it is very susceptible to being skewed by a one-off success and/or strength in very specific thing.
And second, I think this is the more important one, the table reminds me a bit of the football teams that live beyond the teams/buy players they can't afford and then go bust. A lot of those countries use sport to promote their brand/success. They invest a disproportionate amount of their resources in sport whilst failing on a number of other measures...like feeding, clothing, educating, looking after etc etc their people.
But, there must be a solution to this. Can anybody think of a medal table that incorporates money spent/resources available/success in more mainstream sports (perhaps)???
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Matt -
Having read your analysis of the point of the Olympics above maybe you can clarify something for me?
You write: "This whole event is about politics."
And a few sentences later: "They're just games."
I'm confused.
If the Olympics are "about politics" then they aren't "just games" are they?
They are political events.
If that's true, I think I've done the right thing in having decided already to avoid as much of it as humanly possible.
After all, we get more than enough politics as it is.
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Hi Matt,
Thanks for your feedback. Now i am famous!!
Nah i am not upset. Just want to share my views and make your blog more colourful :)
Ben
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Most people would probably be shocked if they knew how haphazard it is for the american olympic team to come up with the athletes they have. There's little organization to sports in america, and most people get involved in sports through school. There's no program to find young promising prospects, and most most end up playing in one of the few major american sports even if they are not suited for them.
A lot of olympic sports are niche sports that someone might fall into through a club in a major city so you're dealing with a pool of very few people. These athletes aren't discovered until their late teens, and there isn't a whole lot of funding. Most funding comes through sponsorship, and most of the athletes also work at regular jobs. There's very little interest in sports like swimming and track(athletics) outside the olympics. If it wasn't for the european circut american track athletes would have a very hard time making a living. The whole thing is very random and there's lots of luck involved. I'm sure it's the same in many other nations. I've coached two sports at the school level and I knew very little about either one. One sport I coached was girls soccer and they had a coaching clinic that taught me the basic rules and some drills to run or I would have been completely lost. I learned as the season went on. Years ago I read an article on a chinese soccer player who played professionaly in the U.S.. I think her name was Sun Wen. In the article she talked about leaving her family and living at a soccer academy at a very young age when it was discovered that she might have the physical talents to be a good soccer player. She would only see her family a few time per year. It's a very different approach. You have one approach that is very disorganized and random and another approach that is very regimented and organized. It's something to reflect on when we watch the games because the athletes become involved in their sports in such a different manner. I would guess that most people outside the U.S. think there's this hugely funded and organized sports program to find young american athletes at a young age and train them, but nothing like that exists. The only sports that the general public cares about and pays attention to are american football, basketball, and baseball.
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Re: #42 by DirkThMarmoset
I dont understand what you hope a proportional GDP factored medal table would achieve? Do you want countries to spend less or more on sports development?
Countries that do well at the olympics do so with the help of substantial sports funding, of course. Is this a bad thing?
People recognise the extra achievements of an athlete who comes from a disadvantaged position. Would it be good for a country that spends nothing on sport to receive recognition if they fortunately produce a winner?
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Well done, bighullabaloo, you've spotted the difference between what I want to be the case (a very idealistic sport for sport's sake stance) and what, I fear, is actually happening here. I went idealistic/optimistic for the original piece but have got steadily more realistic as the days have passed.......much like getting old, I suppose.
goeast12, great post. You're absolutely right about the paradox that is Team USA. America is not really an "Olympic nation" and it has nothing like the government-backed UK Sport or Australian Institute of Sport. All the Olympic disciplines are periphery sports in the US, even track and field, and they live and die on these four-yearly chances to shine.
So how does the US do it, then? Well, it is a "sporting" nation from the very youngest to the oldest. It has lots of good coaches and lots of great facilities. It has a fantastic competitive structure from middle school to college (particularly there), and talent is recognised and encouraged. Grass-roots sport thrives at every level and in every region. It is also a very wealthy nation and sporting success sells, so there is no shortage of private cash. Basically, the US is just good at sport - the Olympic boats are lifted by that more general tide.
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Who will win?
Jupiter ruler 9th in 9th , Mercury 9th from Jupiter.
A better, lucky stratedgy should prevail.
USA
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Actually, China should win the most medals in the past few Olympics. I've seen a short documentary about Fu Minxia, their former diving queen. She was interned to a training facility at young age and gone thru' straight, military-like training 10 hours a day; she only allowed to see her family twice a year. In fact, Guo Jinjin, one of their divers, was reprimanded for 'engaging in excessive commercial activities' after she won the gold in Athens. The country practically have control over the lives of its athletes. Whereas athletes from the U.S. or many other countries lead a normal life, they go to school, go to proms, having fun as young adults...etc. Training for the Olympic is part of their life not a full-time job.
Therefore, China should win the most medals; nevertheless, it doesn't mean that you'll become a World power.
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These Chinese gymnasts look underage.
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I like the idea of medal count/GDP or population. However as is military spendings, the resources you put in reflects the "country's" power as a whole, For example China recently increased spendings to military. but if you do the same normalization, it is far behind many other countries(for sure to the U.S.) but
would you say then China should put in even more?
Yes I also don't care if China or USA will top the medal count(propably USA will still top this year) but as a (sort of) refection to a rising power, China for sure cares more than the USA.
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I agree with you pdlodge that Chinese gymnasts look underage. They look tiny. The reason those women gymnasts are so small is because they have been overtrained. They start training at a very early age about ten years old and as a result their bodies underdevelop.
Their training of long distance runners is unconventional- they make their athletes drink turtle's blood and run the length of a marathon a day.
It just shows the chinese are too serious about the Olympic games and put too much pressure on their athletes. I have never seen any chinese athlete challenge their coaches before. Those athletes are obedient and disciplined. That's why chinese athletes' precious irreplaceable childhood are ruined. They should say to their coaches something like: back off coach, it's only a game
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