|
Summer Olympics 2012 (pg. 8)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Adam420 |
Or how about that fat Saudi girl they sent to the Judo competition? FFS what a joke. Really wasn't worth the whole hoopla re: the head cover but I guess it's something they would have had to deal with sooner or later.
Anyway re: my original comment, honestly, guys, I think more than anything what I would like to see is for us to have more athletes. I just don't like the whole "we're a winter sport country". The fact is that we have guys like Cochran winning silver in the 1500m swimming, the rowing teams, McLennan winning gold on the trampoline - we have the talent and we have the money to win big in the Olympics, but I just don't think our government makes it a big enough priority. |
|
|
| Adam420 |
| quote: | Originally posted by mahalliner
Well in that case, why even award silver or bronze? And you can't tell me that France's 26 total medals is more impressive than Russia's 41 medals just because France has 1 more gold but 8 fewer silver and 8 fewer bronze than Russia. |
No, but if it helps put my logic into perspective I'd say I rather Canada win say, 6 gold, then 10-12 silver/bronze. |
|
|
| Dior Homme |
Since are are talking about medal counts...
We’re No. 11! or 20! or 27!: How countries can tally Olympic medal totals to give themselves a boost
According to Canadian TV viewers, Team Canada closed out the Olympics’ first week nestled between New Zealand and Romania in a comfortable 12th place. Check the BBC, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Telegraph or even Google, however, and Canada is in a distant 29th place, just ahead of Colombia.
The reason for the disparity is an obscure medal-tallying metric pioneered by the U.S. and scorned by much of the world: The “total medals” score.
But then again, Olympic medal rankings are all somewhat arbitrary. “The bottom line … is that most countries spin the results to give themselves a boost,” Bruce Kidd, a professor of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto, said Friday.
For the first four Olympiads, the Games followed the Ancient Greek custom of only recognizing the first place competitor; the silver and bronze medals were not introduced until 1912. These “winner take all” origins likely explain why gold medal rankings have long been the standard for Olympics medal tables.
The “total medals” system first garnered international attention — and suspicion — at Beijing. China’s 51 gold medals represented not only the most gold medal victories since 1988, but a stunning end to the United States’ 18-year domination of the category. Even before the closing ceremonies, state television giddily reverberated with news of the Chinese victory.
Team USA, however, returned to find The New York Times and USA Today both proclaiming U.S. supremacy, with 110 total medals to China’s 100. Two years later, the U.S. media used the same math at Vancouver to claim victory over Canada’s record-breaking (for the Winter Games) 14 gold medals.
“I can’t see the logic of the total medals system at all,” Reuters sports editor Paul Radford said in 2008. “If you look at the expression on athletes’ faces as they just finish second or third, it’s often one of disappointment that they did not get gold and the chance to call themselves Olympic champions.”
Mathematically speaking, both measures are as inaccurate as possible, said John Stockie, a mathematics professor at Simon Fraser University. Ranking by total medals has the unfortunate effect of giving a bronze the same value as a gold, while ranking by gold medals completely cancels out two-thirds of all medal victories. “If you were to try to find a ‘best’ ranking, it’s probably somewhere in between,” he said.
A weighted ranking that gives gold medals three points, silver medals two points and bronze one point would seem the ideal solution, although Mr. Stockie remains dubious it is the most “accurate.” “It all depends what you want to show,” he said.
Of course, no Olympic committee or mainstream media outlet has yet been prepared to draw up a “correct” equation for their medal table. “I just don’t think it’s possible to do that, because everybody has a different measure of what ‘fair’ or ‘best’ is,” said Mr. Stockie.
Saturday’s table tennis match between North and South Korea is hotly anticipated as a politically charged “grudge match.” Nevertheless, many unification-minded Koreans are known to bundle the Olympic results of the two countries and compare them to regional rivals such as China or Japan. “Most South Koreans root for North Koreans in every contest except an inter-Korean one,” John Delury, a professor of International Relations at Seoul’s Yonsei University, told The Atlantic. The Asian-American news blog Goldsea, for instance, noted early on in the London Games that “the two Koreas” were tied with Kazakhstan for fourth place in gold medal rankings.
During the Cold War, when the United States was frequently bested by the athletic machine of the Soviet Union, Team USA could sometimes content itself that the “capitalist” countries had at least outranked the “communist” countries. Similarly, there are likely aging Russians who still group together the medal rankings of the Post-Soviet states. At Beijing, for instance, the former Soviet Republics took home a combined total of 165 medals, well ahead of the 110 won by the U.S..
Small countries with no hope of topping medal rankings will often specialize in a specific category. Jamaica may have sent equestrian and Tae Kwon Do athletes to London, but all eyes are on its world-class sprinters. Or, countries can lean on other non-medal statistics. After the Vancouver Olympics, Prime Minister Stephen Harper noted, rather obscurely, that Canadians had bagged “50 top-five finishes.”
Officially, the International Olympic Committee is squeamish about official medal tallies, with the official Olympic charter clearly stating that the committee “shall not draw up any global ranking per country.” As per the idealistic vision of Pierre De Coubertin, the Olympic movement’s moustachioed founder, the Games are supposed to be about friendly competition — not nationalistic rivalry.
The philosophy is obvious at Montreal’s Olympic Park, where the results of the 1976 Games are immortalized in a series of tarnished plaques. The gold medal winners are listed by first, middle and last names, with their home countries indicated by nothing more than a cryptic, three-letter code.
“Even generating a medal table in principle is the wrong thing to do at the very start,” said Mr. Stockie.
LINK
I think if you were to take a point system of 1st=3pts, 2nd=2pts, and 3rd=1pt, we would see who would really clear up. But if total medals is what you look at it as... then you are really giving gold the same value as bronze, which really doesn't make any sense. |
|
|
| LightsOut |
American Athletes at the Olympics: 530
Chinese Athletes at the Olympics: 380
Game, Set, Match: China. |
|
|
| ChemEnhanced |
| I think this Olympics is quickly becoming a colossal failure for Canada. Before the Olympics started the COC said they wanted to be in the Top 12 for total medal count. They also suggested Canada would need 18-20 medals to do that. |
|
|
| Dior Homme |
| quote: | Originally posted by ChemEnhanced
I think this Olympics is quickly becoming a colossal failure for Canada. Before the Olympics started the COC said they wanted to be in the Top 12 for total medal count. They also suggested Canada would need 18-20 medals to do that. |
Well technically, its not over yet. Unless the COC had a certain timeframe to win them at. ie. by the 10th day |
|
|
| nacarter |
It's hard to describe it as a colossal failure when we currently sit 12th in total medals - the stated goal of the COC.
Canadians get what they pay for. Government funding for amateur sport is low, as demonstrated by the fact that half our rowing team lives in London on Kraft Dinner, one of our marathoners lives in his parents' basement in Hamilton and a second marathoner (along with his wife and newborn daughter) live in a one bedroom apartment in Guelph that's smaller than most people's living rooms.
There's always somebody who likes to point out that the US government doesn't pay their athletes anything. That's true; however, private sponsorship - both large and small companies - is considerably larger. Even a national class runner in the US is getting $75,000/yr in sponsorship. The Olympians are closer to $200,000/yr. Our marathoners? $30,000/yr from New Balance, and about $10,000 from all other sources (including gov't). You can live on it, but it's pretty tough to invest in the technology (Alter G anti-gravity treadmill used by Galen Rupp and Mo Farah at the Nike Distance Project in Oregon costs $90,000), altitude training camps, Physio and Massage support teams, and nutrition required to get to the top.
This problem starts in the developmental years. In the US, a kid who makes the national junior team NEVER has to worry about coming up with the $2-3000 it costs go to each international event. Even the smallest companies consider it a matter of local pride and patriotism to make sure these kids can succeed on the global stage. In Canada, trying to get ANY company to donate funding is like pulling teeth. I'm not talking about the whole bill either. I'm talking $500. We have a major running chain (Running Room) that offers NOTHING to the top level of the sport. And I'm talking track and field, a relatively high profile sport. You're even worse off if you're in a sport such as biathlon or table tennis.
Amateur sport in this country is a fate worse than welfare. Want the right to criticize the performance of our athletes? Pull out your chequebook! |
|
|
| LightsOut |
| Some of the US athletes are taken care of by their federation, the womans soccer team for example. From what I can gather, if you're on the team roster, you're essentially on salary. Plus you're absolutely correct, endorsements up their ass. |
|
|
| LightsOut |
Also, what's up with this Algerian runner?
He gets ejected from the Olympics by the IOC for not trying in his 800m race yesterday. But today, he gets a doctors note saying he was under the weather, so they let him back in. He competes in the 1500m today and wins gold. But the day before he couldn't even put in a decent effort....
Some serious highschool doctors note stuff going on here. |
|
|
| FunkyCrew |
| quote: | Originally posted by Adam420
Or how about that fat Saudi girl they sent to the Judo competition? |
eeh most judoists (sp?) are quite heavy, non? |
|
|
| Adam420 |
| quote: | Originally posted by FunkyCrew
eeh most judoists (sp?) are quite heavy, non? |
She was full on fat, like obese fat |
|
|
| Dior Homme |
| Congrats to Mark Oldershaw and his families first Olympic medal . Over 3 generations since 1948 and 5 olympians. |
|
|
|
|
