2012 Olympics

**Edited by NoNukes, : Pointless

They give out silver and bronze too, if they were irrelevant why have them at all? I'm just counting up the sum total of all the medals won. That spells victory to me.- Oni

Well, kinda sorta.If there was just one event - 200m butterfly - and Phelps creamed the field and got gold, but two Chinese swimmers took silver and bronze, you'd be saying that the US had won wouldn't you ?For my money, I like the system that counts 4 points for Gold, 2 for Silver and 1 for Bronze. The other medals mean something still, but the Gold trumps the sum of Silver and Bronze.(Having said that, I'm not too fussed about it - team US had a great Olympics and won the team prize as far as I'm concerned - gratz guys ! )

Is this really how you all protest?:

Well no, sometimes we look like this when we are protesting but usually we look like this.

Taking the values of the medals into account makes sense, with a 3,2,1 scoring method probably the most accurate indicator. That works to your advantage in this Olympics.So, the U.S. is very pleased to have pulled back ahead of China in the modern superpower competition, but what does the 104 medals really tell you?There are three main factors that seem to determine the Olympic performances: wealth, size, and culture/ethnicity. All countries with high per. capita incomes do well in relation to their size, and the U.S. and U.K. are no exceptions. China's size related portion of the 900 total medals given would be about 160, the U.S. about 40, and the U.K. just 8! India's a good example of size alone counting for little when a country is low in per. capita wealth and the culture sectors.Could the U.S. possibly get 320 medals in a modern Olympics? Hypothetically, yes. It's the "size" equivalent of Britain's 65. Wealth is certainly no problem, so the factors preventing it would have to fit into the broad category of culture.One of the ways of eliminating the wealth and size factors to answer the question I put in the post title is to create an imaginary United States of Western Europe, limiting it to the U.S. population of 310 million. Putting together the 5 largest countries (Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Spain) gives us about that. Medals? Total 188. Gold 62 Silver 66 Bronze 60. (U.S. 46, 29, 29 =104).Immediately, the U.S. performance looks ordinary. Is it a disadvantage participating as a larger unit? It should actually be a slight advantage (more chance of the depth to win team events, including relays).So, why mention all this? I get the impression from looking at the American media that many Americans won't realise that the U.S. performance was actually below average to "first world" (wealthy country) standards. (Also, to Eastern European standards). What the 104 medals tell you is what you already know: that you are by far the largest of the world's wealthy countries. But if you want to measure the "culture" aspect you are (like the U.K. - the last two Olympics were exceptions, not the rule!) pretty ordinary.With all the excessive flag waving that's been going on here in the U.K., it's a good idea to bring Brits down to earth by pointing out that we only came about 21st, not 3rd or 4th, when population size is taken into account. But most Brits are realistic about our sporting prowess. As we have close traditional cultural/sporting relationships with countries like Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica which really do have impressive sporting cultures, and delight in demonstrating how they've left the mother country far behind, it's hard for us to lose touch with reality in this respect.

It would be interesting to see how many metaled non American athletes go to school, live and train almost exclusively in the US.I think the Olympic committee should institute a rule that athletes who reside/live and train in a specific country for more than 75 percent of their careers, should represent the country that they are product of,
rather than living somewhere for the majority of their lives and then donning the other uniform.Example would be Maria Sharapova who has lived in the US for 18 years.

No, not really. That's all we needed to hear. Why would we want to measure our victory of the game by ignoring the major contributing factors and focusing on the least? Are you trying to tell us that we are so awesome that if we could get our culture right then we could make a huge joke of the whole games like that?Now that you meantion it, Sorta, we are. Not because of our culture itself, but since we so awesome in the other regards that we were victorious, then that kinda creates its own culture... of winning.

I'm reminded of the 1996 Olympics when American Michael Johnson won gold in the 200 meters. He was touted as the "fastest man in the world" even though he was demonstrably slower than Canadian Donovan Bailey (whom I have mentioned earlier in the thread) who won gold in the 100 meters. In an earlier Olympics, when fellow American Carl Lewis had won gold in the 100 meters, he was called the "fastest man in the world".Americans seem to have a need to be the "best", even if they have to move the goalposts to do it.

You seem to be missing Bluegenes point that for your size the amount of 'winning' you are doing isn't all that great.

Why would you need to hear what you already know? And why would that knowledge be reason for celebration after the Olympics any more than before? In a way, I'm suggesting that that's exactly what you are doing when you regard the results as a "victory". I'm pointing out that you're anything but awesome when it comes to sport. That's not to take anything away from the excellent individuals who did get medals. But there's no point in Americans seeing the team performance as a point of national pride or "victory" when average European standards would mean about another 70 or so medals from a population like yours.

This is a lot of hating just to say, hey you didn't do as great as you think. Sure, wow, thanks for pointing that out. It makes a lot of sense that the country with the most medals, the most golds and the most silvers didn't do all that well.I'm convinced. Next time lets do better guys. It's not enought to be in first place overall and in gold and silver, somehow we need to do better than that? Maybe kill off a few million fat, non-athletic Americans, and maybe a few million Mexicans that way the numbers average us out above standards of awesomeness. - OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

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

Seriously. Using your argument, both China and India's proportion ought to be 4 times what the US accomplishes, always. But that never happens. They always underperform, at least according to your argument.The size related argument has some merit, but you well overstate the impact here. It is certainly the case that a straight per capita rating is not appropriate. There are limits to how many Chinese athletes or US athletes can participate in the 100 meter race.Only the top few athletes in each country get to compete. Only the smallest countries are so tiny that they have a little chance of fielding a few world class athletes in a sport. And there is little point in sending more than your best three individuals or teams. I completely agree that a weighting scheme is appropriate, but the scheme does not work to the US's advantage in this Olympics, because no advantage is needed. The US would be first with any rational weighting including 10:2:1, 3:2:1, or 1:1:1. Only an irrational and indefensible weighting that valued bronze medals over gold or silver by huge amounts could have changed this in 2012.

Well we keep asking them to lets us send two or three more gymnastic teams and about another 30 swimmers and wrestlers but they have these dumb rules preventing us from doing that.- Oni