2012 Olympics

During the Olympics, I usually feel like the coverage here is overly saturated in American pride and patriotism. It bothers me that the general American public has pretty much no interest in most of the events and doesn't even know how many of them are played or scored, but still has a profound interest in the USA winning lots of medals.We like to boast a lot about our successes in the Olympics, but, since we don't even acknowledge the existence of these events outside of the Olympics, it comes off as trying to take collective credit for what a very tiny special-interest group in our society accomplished pretty much without our support.It's far more impressive, in my mind, that countries like Latvia or Botswana can even scrounge up a couple of athletes from their tiny populations to compete on a world stage. I'm particularly impressed by the African nations, who usually have neither the populations, the national solidarity nor the infrastructure to consistently produce good athletes.I'm much more interested in seeing those athletes succeed than in seeing another American take another medal.

Hi, Caffeine. I have been following Botswana this year (I like their flag). They have never won a medal at the Olympics. They sent four athletes, one of whom (Amantle Montsho) is the reigning world champion in the women's 400 meters. Montsho missed a medal by 0.03 seconds. Two others (a boxer and a 400-m runner) were unable to get out of the early rounds in their events.But today, Botswanan runner Nijel Amos took silver in the men's 800 meters, less than a second behind the new world-record time set by David Rudisha, the Maasai tribesman from Kenya (the first Maasai to medal, by the way). Amos is only 18, and he just put up the third fastest time in world history.Yay, Botswana!

Hi, Bluegenes. In some ways, yes. Most events restrict the number of entrants from a single country. And, in many cases, the USA would have had no problem qualifying more athletes than they were allowed to enter.For example, at the US Olympic Trials, 6 men met Olympic "A" Standard in the 100 meters, and 8 met Olympic "A" Standard in 200 meters (link). And, by FIVB rankings, the USA would have qualified 3 teams for women's beach volleyball, and 3 for men's (link, click on "Rankings").Whether or not this would have translated into more medals for the USA is obviously uncertain, but the possibility exists.Edited by Blue Jay, : "url" tags

Hi, Bluegenes. I think it would be more than just an occasional bronze, but I agree that it probably wouldn't have brought us up to the level we should have reached under the weighted standards you were talking about.-----Also, I've never quite understood the inclusiveness people use when talking about the Olympics. Americans are always so proud when we win a lot of medals. But, I didn't win any medals, and I'm pretty sure that nothing I did made any difference at all in the final medal count at the Olympics.Even if I were part of a great sporting culture, I didn't have a hand in making it so great, so I have a hard time feeling any pride about what my countrymen do in the Olympics. I'm happy for them, sure: but pride feels like taking credit for what other people did, just because my house is somewhat near theirs geographically.Well, I guess I did run 2 miles today in 17:22, which is close to a personal best. That's only a little more than twice the world-record time. How that contributes to America's medal haul at the Olympics, I don't know: but I'll come up with something, I'm sure.

Hi, Straggler.So, just to be clear, I don't believe relaxing entry restrictions would make the US suddenly dominate all the sports. I also think the entry restrictions are a good thing, because it gives smaller countries a better chance to compete, and broad participation, in my mind, is the most important part of the Olympics.But just for the sake of friendly debate, I want to respond to you. As a counterexample, the US women placed 3rd, 4th and 5th in qualifying for the individual all-around in gymnastics, but only two were allowed to compete. So, the 23rd and 24th best women got to compete, but the 4th best (who had a real shot at a medal) didn't.In beach volleyball, USA had 3 men's teams in qualifying position, but only two were allowed to compete. Both won their groups, but were upset early in the tournament. Without the entry restrictions, the Italian team that beat Dallhauser and Rogers wouldn't have qualified, and it's a whole different tournament with three US teams that all have a reasonable chance of medaling.These are the kind of situations I'm talking about. I'm sure there are more situations in which entry restrictions wouldn't have made a difference for the USA's medal count, but, even so, there are situations in which legitimate contenders are restricted from competing, and this tends to effect larger countries more than smaller ones. Yes, I believe the United States very likely could have swept the basketball medals if they had been allowed to make three teams. But, the fact that the final was so close probably means that the gap is closing.But, I think it makes perfect sense in team sports to restrict a country to one team.

Hi, Bluegenes. Yeah, I think that's probably about right.Although, if, instead of weighting by population or GDP, you weighted by average health and fitness of the country's population, I bet you would find that the USA performs very high for its level of obesity and heart disease.

Hi, Straggler. I think the point is about the number of quality entrants, not about simple numbers. And, in some cases, it is demonstrably the case that entry restrictions prevented high-quality athletes from competing when they had a very good shot at a medal (Jordyn Wieber is the best example, in my mind).It certainly isn't the reason why the USA is under-performing on Bluegenes' per-capita standards, but it is a good theoretical challenge to the appropriateness of the strictly per-capita standards. If someone were interested in crunching numbers to determine which country has the best sporting culture using medal counts as the standard of measure, they'd need to apply a correction for entry restrictions. And, the correction would tend to work in the favor of large countries with large talent pools, and work against small countries with small talent pools.But, if we wanted a real measure of sporting success, some measure incorporating individual rankings would probably be more accurate than medal counts. And, in this case, entry restrictions would have larger effects on the comparison between countries.