I haven't been watching much of the prime time Olympic coverage on NBC - too much "all-USA-all-the-time" for me. (I'm currently reading Charles Williams' last novel, Man On A Leash from 1973 instead. I felt the need for some detective-noir.) I like sports, I like the USA, but there are a lot of sports in the games that don't have an American (or as Mr. Gin and Tacos specifies, a marketable American) at a highly competitive level. I understand that the point of televising the games is to stuff the coffers with advertising money - primarily from political mud-slinging - and that the time differential allows for an extremely selective process for determining what gets shown and what gets dropped. I personally would like to see some high jump since I participated in that back in the years between when Dwight Stones set his last world record and became a commentator. (His world record 2.32m (7'-7") in 1976 isn't too bad compared against the current record of 2.45m (8'-1/2") set in 1993)
The USA is doing well in the medal count as well. I'm guessing the $25K a gold medal garners the winner from the Olympic Committee certainly isn't a disincentive, but pales in comparison to the Italian payout of $182,400. Regardless, the USA pours a lot of money into system that spits out medal winners. After seeing three Jamaicans qualify for the 200m finals last night, I had a couple of thoughts cross my mind other than "Cool!":
To answer the first set of questions, I found this cool site: www.medalspercapita.com. It lets you sort the medal count various ways, and has data back for all summer games back to 1896 Games in Athens.
I haven't yet found an answer to the second question, though I suspect the number is fairly high, especially with western hemisphere countries. Maybe somebody else knows?
The USA is doing well in the medal count as well. I'm guessing the $25K a gold medal garners the winner from the Olympic Committee certainly isn't a disincentive, but pales in comparison to the Italian payout of $182,400. Regardless, the USA pours a lot of money into system that spits out medal winners. After seeing three Jamaicans qualify for the 200m finals last night, I had a couple of thoughts cross my mind other than "Cool!":
- What is a more fair way to determine medal harvesting? Medals per capita? Medals per GDP? and;
- How many athletes from around the world train in the USA - either as part of one of the collegiate track teams or as part of a club?
To answer the first set of questions, I found this cool site: www.medalspercapita.com. It lets you sort the medal count various ways, and has data back for all summer games back to 1896 Games in Athens.
I haven't yet found an answer to the second question, though I suspect the number is fairly high, especially with western hemisphere countries. Maybe somebody else knows?
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