Olympic Medal Table Hoopla

This morning,I just cannot ignore the pervasive curiousity among close watchers of the Olympics regarding why the US media seem to have a completely different medals table than the rest of the world.

Growing up as a little kid,my dad always drummed into me that the aim of the olympics is to participate, not to win.However,it seems increasingly since the cold war,the olympics have doubled as a medium for political expression.

Of course historically,political points were scored in the olympics as early as the 1936 Berlin Olympics when Jesse Owens' accomplishment were not only rubbished by Hitler but he was also given the cold shoulder by his own government at the height of the racial segregation.

In more recent terms,who could so easily have forgotten the quagmire of Tibetian sword of Damocles that hung on president Bush's head over the matter of whether to boycott the Beijing olympics altogether.



At the first olympics of the modern era in Athens,Greece 1896,the IOC official medals table placed the US on top with 11 gold medals even though the Greeks in 2nd with 10 gold medals had a total of 42 medals-more than double the American total.This had long been the unofficial but generally accepted norm.

It however seems that since Barcelona 1992 when the US last placed anything but 1st on the overall table,Americans have gotten used to occupying pole position.


Well,if you care to know,the USSR(or whatever was left of it) consistently dominated most olympics(those it was not boycotting!) of the modern era until the break up of the soviet union.


One evident truth here is that there is power in numbers.Perhaps it's no wonder the US and the USSR won more medals than any other countries because they were predominant economic and military powers and had enough funds to support their athletes whom they had in abundance since they were also very populous nations.


There is now another kid on the blocks,ladies and gentlemen.That kid is China.
China has emerged as both an economic and military power in the last decade and must now take its rightful place in the modern age.
China obviously has more numbers than anyone now.


As a matter of fact,the chinese population is 3 times the american and russian populations put together.They will be able to discover more elite athletes in those Chinese slums going forwards,so the US and everyone else had better get used to it!


In case you live in the US like me and you've been a little confused by the biased reporting of the overall medals table,here's the original medals table published by the IOC:


http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/medals_table/default.stm


OMC