bahamas olympic LEAD untouchable!!

[danny_galaga]

Link to news article


australia is a distant second (but still not too shabby)




Edit by moderator: fixed URL

[GGKoul]

Thats a different way of looking at the standings.

[DarkKobold]

The problem is the bastardization of the olympics. Less than the absolute most stellar athelete can change their country all too easy. That person may represent the populous, however, it doesn't mean they started as a part of it.

[danny_galaga]

just looked up Tonique Williams-darling. Shes was born in Nassau, Bahamas. doesn't that make her a Bahaman? She went to Uni in the US, but that doesn't make her american...

So i still say, three cheers to the Bahamas!!

[cdbrown]

Aussies slipped back to 3rd with Norway sneaking it's way into 2nd
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/BE9F47591541E29ECA256EF40004F25A?Open



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[danny_galaga]

yeah, godammit... i was thinking today that maybe a better way of looking at the scores is to compare how many athletes per medal each country has. sort of an efficiency rating. someone like India mght do well in that because they had hardly any athletes...

[patrickl]

But then the countries would just send fewer athletes (or at least use stricter limits before you are allowed to go).

I have seen another way to rank the medals that also took into account the economical situation and available facilities. Forgot how it was called though.

[danny_galaga]

ah, but it's not that simple. if you send less athletes, but of the same quality then there's less chance of winning so you're ranking wouldn't change. if you wanted the ranking to move up, youd have to send a decent number of good athletes.

i guess medals per capita is the easiest way (after just listing totals, us aussies still came fourth in that format! not too bad   )

[patrickl]

ah, but it's not that simple. if you send less athletes, but of the same quality then there's less chance of winning so you're ranking wouldn't change. if you wanted the ranking to move up, youd have to send a decent number of good athletes.

Simply just send the athletes with gold medal chances and the "medals per participant" rank will surely go up.

[danny_galaga]

obviously all countries already only send their gold medal contenders. or at least the best of the best from that country. ok, so unless you're african and from the americas or carribbean then you don't have a huge chance of winning the 100M sprint but if you send your best there's always a small one. in the last winter olympics we had a guy in an ice skating race. he was the best from australia. but he was coming last. suddenly EVERYONE fell over and because he was so far behind he missed the crash and won gold!! if he didn't bother going because he wasn't in the same league he wouldn't have won. its funny because he actually MADE the skates for many of the skaters he was racing (",)

[patrickl]

OK, maybe an example then. If the US would have only sent Phelps. They "knew" he was gonna win a few.  The US would have had a 6 gold medals per athlete rank.

Another example is that the Netherlands would have only sent Pieter van den Hoogenband, Ankie van Grunsven,  Inge de Bruijn and Leontien van Moorsel. Those were the dutch athletes that we assumed to get gold (in advance).

Of course it's not foolproof but most athletes sent to the olympics are NOT gold medal contenders. Well tehy contend for it, but they will know upfront that apart from something weird happening they don't have much chance. I guess on any event there would be at most 5 athletes with a reasonable chance of winning gold. This is known in advance with quite a high margin of accuracy.

You can of course imagine specific a counter example, but that does not negate the overlying principle in general.

But then noone is actually gonna implement a silly ranking like that  (it's against the "competing is more important than winning" credo) so who cares .

[GodSend25]

China is well known to only send people whom have a legitimate chance for gold....

OK, maybe an example then. If the US would have only sent Phelps. They "knew" he was gonna win a few.  The US would have had a 6 gold medals per athlete rank.

Another example is that the Netherlands would have only sent Pieter van den Hoogenband, Ankie van Grunsven,  Inge de Bruijn and Leontien van Moorsel. Those were the dutch athletes that we assumed to get gold (in advance).

Of course it's not foolproof but most athletes sent to the olympics are NOT gold medal contenders. Well tehy contend for it, but they will know upfront that apart from something weird happening they don't have much chance. I guess on any event there would be at most 5 athletes with a reasonable chance of winning gold. This is known in advance with quite a high margin of accuracy.

You can of course imagine specific a counter example, but that does not negate the overlying principle in general.

But then noone is actually gonna implement a silly ranking like that  (it's against the "competing is more important than winning" credo) so who cares .

[GGKoul]

China is well known to only send people whom have a legitimate chance for gold....

Not this year.  They purposely sent a younger team this year.  So they could get some Olympic experience and be better prepared in 2008 at Being.

I think China will beat the US in medals at the 2008 games.

[danny_galaga]

OK, maybe an example then. If the US would have only sent Phelps. They "knew" he was gonna win a few.  The US would have had a 6 gold medals per athlete rank.

Another example is that the Netherlands would have only sent Pieter van den Hoogenband, Ankie van Grunsven,  Inge de Bruijn and Leontien van Moorsel. Those were the dutch athletes that we assumed to get gold (in advance).

Of course it's not foolproof but most athletes sent to the olympics are NOT gold medal contenders. Well tehy contend for it, but they will know upfront that apart from something weird happening they don't have much chance. I guess on any event there would be at most 5 athletes with a reasonable chance of winning gold. This is known in advance with quite a high margin of accuracy.

You can of course imagine specific a counter example, but that does not negate the overlying principle in general.

But then noone is actually gonna implement a silly ranking like that  (it's against the "competing is more important than winning" credo) so who cares .

you are right if the statistic is counting gold only. but if you made it the ratio of ALL medals to athletes then i think countries would send pretty much the same mix they do now, don't you think?