How is your country doing at the Olympics?

perseus

perseus

Active member
It's no disgrace to get the silver, well not if you are an Australian anyway!:wink:

There are several ways of assessing this in terms of total medals, weighted medals, medals per capita and GDP. The West Indian nations and Australasia do very well on this basis.

http://www.medalspercapita.com/#medals-per-capita:2012

Although team GB may have performed very well at the elite 'medal' contention level, many of their more typical athletes are performing below par in my opinion. Also some of their medals may have been partly achieved through technology especially in the cycling. This is legal but does it conform to Olympian principles?

It's good to be 3rd in the medal table, all the same!

Even on a weighted per capita measure we are up with the Australians

http://www.medalspercapita.com/#weighted-per-capita:2012
 
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Sally Pearson had a great run last night, and the girl against Victoria Pendleton in the cycling so I'm sure things will get better. Problem is Australia have the US to compete with in swimming and countries such as China aren't standing still. Even GB seem to take some sports more seriously!
 
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We got 18 Golds in Beijing and are third place at the moment. Australia have dropped back since they cut back on all the coaching that they used to do and now many of them are working in Britain
 
Actually its quite disturbing to see how many coaches, coaching staff and even ex Aussie atthletes are now involved in other countries teams!! The list is pretty big, but it reminds me of the ex Chines and Eastern Europeans that have popped up here in Oz and elsewhere.
Just natural migration to greener pastures...?
 
LeEnfield said:
We got 18 Golds in Beijing and are third place at the moment. Australia have dropped back since they cut back on all the coaching that they used to do and now many of them are working in Britain
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I am brand new to this site....... just browsing..... saw your picture.. had to comment, and experimenting also.

:bravo: my first blast was from an old C-119 and an old T-10.
 
Singapore got two bronze, both in the table tennis tornaments- I think...

The reason we are not doing well, I think is the damned fish and chips they are feeding us... and no chilli... No Singaporrean can survive overseas without their chilli...

This is an outrage.... not the bronze medal, but no chilli...
 
viper2007 said:
Singapore got two bronze, both in the table tennis tornaments- I think...

The reason we are not doing well, I think is the damned fish and chips they are feeding us... and no chilli... No Singaporrean can survive overseas without their chilli...

This is an outrage.... not the bronze medal, but no chilli...
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Chilli in Fish and Chips????? You'll be putting coca cola in the tea next!!!!!

I must admit I am surprised Britain is 3rd, maybe someone decided to take sport seriously for a change.
 
BritinAfrica said:
Chilli in Fish and Chips????? You'll be putting coca cola in the tea next!!!!!

I must admit I am surprised Britain is 3rd, maybe someone decided to take sport seriously for a change.
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Opa Brit, you have been to Singapore, you know how obssessed we are with chilli, everythings got to have chilli in or on it... Have you come across something they call "sambal belacan"- I do not have an English translation for it... It is mean and evil. It would drive sane men crazy...

I tried coca cola with tea- not a good combination...

Yes, Britain seems to be doing pretty well...
 
viper2007 said:
Opa Brit, you have been to Singapore, you know how obssessed we are with chilli, everythings got to have chilli in or on it... Have you come across something they call "sambal belacan"- I do not have an English translation for it... It is mean and evil. It would drive sane men crazy...

I tried coca cola with tea- not a good combination...

Yes, Britain seems to be doing pretty well...
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To be honest Viper, I never noticed chilli in anything while I was there. My kids are crazy about chilli and or curry, if it don't burn their mouth and makes their bums burn in the morning they are not happy. Me, I stick to stuff without chilli or curry.
 
Warwick said:
Actually its quite disturbing to see how many coaches, coaching staff and even ex Aussie atthletes are now involved in other countries teams!! The list is pretty big, but it reminds me of the ex Chines and Eastern Europeans that have popped up here in Oz and elsewhere.
Just natural migration to greener pastures...?
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Not sure what you are worried about, if our swimmers were any worse they would have to put on lifeguards at the pool.
 
Very funny Monty

New Zealand remains one of the most successful nations in terms of population (again). Even Australia performs well on this basis. It's just not up to their extraordinary previous achievements. Of course the world moves on particularly China.

Could any relative problems be due to focusing on Winners rather than depth in the team in previous Olympics? The hysteria in the UK with their number of Gold medals belies a more indifferent performance throughout the team relative to expectations. In many sports they didn't get beyond the preliminaries.
 
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perseus said:
Very funny Monty

New Zealand remains one of the most successful nations in terms of population (again). Even Australia performs well on this basis. It's just not up to their extraordinary previous achievements. Of course the world moves on particularly China.

Could any relative problems be due to focusing on Winners rather than depth in the team in previous Olympics? The hysteria in the UK with their number of Gold medals belies a more indifferent performance throughout the team relative to expectations. In many sports they didn't get beyond the preliminaries.
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Nope our problems are much deeper than just focusing on winners, in fact it is just the opposite we spend too much time building a mass of mediocre competitors and ignore winners.

We have finally started developing a "high performance" strategy which directly funds athletes based on performance so rather than just giving $X million to swimming we now identify those who can achieve world rankings and they are being routed into performance schools and higher levels of funding.

The thing about New Zealand is that we expect almost nothing from track and field activities or gymnastics because that is not an area we put any effort into (hell I couldn't imagine a New Zealand rhythmic gymnastics team it would be like watching synchronised bulldozers) but we are big on swimming, sailing, canoeing, rowing etc. and there is a great deal of disappointment in the performance of the swim and sailing teams.

As for being successful on a per capita basis I am not sure anyone here wants to hear that it is right up there with "its not winning or losing that counts but how you play the game", medals are handed out to winners no matter what your population.
 
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Well the NZ team have performed better than previously. Whether it was up to expectations based on the results in the year prior to the Olympics I'm not sure.

At the Sydney Olympics, New Zealand won four medals (one gold and three bronze)
At the Athens Olympics, New Zealand won five medals (three gold and two silver)
In Beijing, New Zealand won nine medals (three gold, two silver and four bronze)
In London, New Zealand won thirteen medals (five gold, three silver and five bronze)

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU1208/S00217/best-olympic-performance-since-seoul-in-1988.htm
 
perseus said:
Well the NZ team have performed better than previously. Whether it was up to expectations based on the results in the year prior to the Olympics I'm not sure.

At the Sydney Olympics, New Zealand won four medals (one gold and three bronze)
At the Athens Olympics, New Zealand won five medals (three gold and two silver)
In Beijing, New Zealand won nine medals (three gold, two silver and four bronze)
In London, New Zealand won thirteen medals (five gold, three silver and five bronze)

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU1208/S00217/best-olympic-performance-since-seoul-in-1988.htm
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Not quite:
* Six gold
* Two silver
* Five bronze
* 15th overall on table

Apparently we have received another "late" gold...

New Zealand won its sixth gold medal of the Olympics late last night after Valerie Adams' rival Nadzeya Ostapchuk tested positive for drugs and was stripped of gold.

The dramatic development occurred just hours after the curtain came down on the 30th Olympiad in London.

Ostapchuk tested positive test for metenolone, an anabolic agent.

The result means the 27-year-old Adams has won gold at successive Olympics.

On Tuesday morning, she finished second behind Ostapchuk, her throw of 20.7m well behind the Belarusian's 21.36m.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=10826786

But it still does not compensate for the fact that there are sports we should be better at where we compete poorly sailing and swimming especially.
 
I'm not convinced by this analysis

Before the Games started, BBC Radio's More or Less programme decided to level the statistical playing field by working out how many medals nations could expect to win based on population and GDP alone.
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I thought New Zealand would be on here, but no

The Medal table the real winners and losers

The lesson from this? If you do badly, do really badly and don't get any medals at all, in that way somehow you will be left out of the analysis altogether!
 
I am not sure I would put a lot of stock in the random guesses of radio announcers I doubt they even remembered New Zealand was there when they made their "predictions".

The odd thing is that in terms of medals it rated as a successful games for us but several sports were major let downs for us.
 
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