Forums >Off the Beaten Path>The Olympics random thoughts thread (may contain spoilers)
Queen of 3rd Place
I <3 Meb!!! He was so gracious in his interview with NBC.
Ex runner
Meb rocks! He represented our country well.
Why is it sideways?
The U.S. won the medal count, overall. But the U.S. was 49th in medals per capita. Most impressive were New Zealand, Jamaica, and Hungary.
If you're going to use that metric, you have to say Grenada, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago!
On the same site (and something I was wondering about) is medals per GDP:
http://www.medalspercapita.com/#medals-by-gdp:2012
Joggaholic
The U.S. won the medal count, overall.
Some may disagree...
Feeling the growl again
Well what about NATO then?
"If you want to be a bad a$s, then do what a bad a$s does. There's your pep talk for today. Go Run." -- Slo_Hand
I am spaniel - Crusher of Treadmills
Apparently someone had already thought of that... hee
That would be fine if they competed as one nation... sort of like China.
You're good.
This got me wondering how the former USSR would have done, and of course someone had already done the tallying...
If you're going to use that metric, you have to say Grenada, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago! On the same site (and something I was wondering about) is medals per GDP: http://www.medalspercapita.com/#medals-by-gdp:2012
Well, I agree on Jamaica, but Grenada and T&T are more distinguished by their small population than their medal count.
Still...
Hm, and what if we count Jamaicans who have trained in the US at University of _____? Do we get partial credit?
Best Present Ever
We were just laughing about these various ways of counting medals on our run this morning. Locally, we keep getting variations of "if the University of Virginia were a country, we'd have more medals than ..." Of course, in the count of UVA athletes is anyone who has ever been at UVA, even if they aren't current students, as well as students competing for countries other than the US (the latter seems like a fair count, the former seems a bit forced).
those seemed badly flawed totals. if you wanted to assume a mythical country by combining many countries you would have to wipe out a lot of medals. you can't enter 20 people into a single competition from a single nation.
There are many stories, but here is one that you may not have heard about yet. I thought I'd share.
During the men's triathlon, the 2x medalist from '04 and '08 from Canada (Simon Whitfield) came out of the water in 15th place, and got on his bike. From what I understand, he struggled to get clipped into his pedals, and within the first mile, he crashed going over a speed bump, and also brought down a Costa Rican athlete who was supposed to do real well.
Prior to the race, they didn't know each other.
There was a lot of anger by the Costa Rican's on Twitter / Facebook, as well as disappointment by the Canadian.
A couple days after the race, the Costa Rican (Leo), wrote a Facebook message to Simon Whitfield that was quite impressive. He told Whitfield that he loved watching him in Athens and Beijing as well as having no hard feelings toward Whitfield for ruining his Olympic dreams. He asked his countrymen not to blame Whitfield for the crash.
Whitfield personally responded to his unknown competitor, and they've become friends. They haven't met in person yet, only through Facebook. They're planning on meeting soon in person.
The cool thing is that some of these lesser known athletes have open Facebook accounts that you can be their friends and read correspondence between them.
The Olympics are wonderful, with so much more than medal counting. There are many stories that we'll never hear about.
It's great that the world can come together for a couple weeks and entertain us in our homes while also providing life experiences of their own.
Cheers,Brian
Life Goals:
#1: Do what I can do
#2: Enjoy life