Soldato
Shanaze Reade is a shoe in for Gold.
What is wrong?
- Thread starter Third Opinion
- Start date
Soldato
Guys I'm getting worried about Russia sneaking up on us 
. Please tell me we have a few more medals to go yet.
. Please tell me we have a few more medals to go yet.
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- 8 May 2007
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You really think so? I don't follow BMX but it seems like a sport where nothing can be expected. It's been a couple of years since she won a world championship.
Same way she was in Beijing, right?
Soldato
When you think how massive USA is compared to us, we're only 8 golds less than them so far.
They'll probably get quite a few more in athletics while we probably won't get that many more out of any event.
Soldato
When you think how massive USA is compared to us, we're only 8 golds less than them so far.
So much trolling going on on various international boards between the Brits and USA with this argument. We are certainly doing very well for such a small island.
Soldato
http://www.medalspercapita.com/#golds-per-capita:2012
we're 9th in gold medals per capita and 14th in total medals per capita.
ahead of any country of similar populace or greater.
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in fact if you removed all cycling and rowing events we'd still have as many golds at this point as russia and more than france or germany
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Soldato
exactly
or what - are we supposed to ignore the decades old evidence that it has always been the countries that actually gave a **** that did well. as soon as we cared enough we excelled.
any attempt to link medal success to population size solely is fatuous. it's investment and enthusiasm that gets the job done.
Australia proves that - they may not be having a great olympics right now but they fight well above their weight generally.
now jamaica is relevant after the boost bolt gave them and now they have 'the beast' too.
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Soldato
maybe, maybe not - this time last night did you think we'd get golds in the triathlon or the dressage? we have no history at all in these events.
what about canoeing or show jumping? or shooting?
we still have half our boxing squad in with a chance of medalling for example.
mo farah in the 5000m also
the americans have got a maximum of 36/37 golds in the last few olympics by the way and the russians got 23 golds in beijing.
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Brownlee was favourite for the Triathlon, he has been really strong for the last couple of years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/2012/jul/30/olympics-2012-alternative-medal-table
We're 35th in terms of total medals against GDP (since there's direct way to measure the Olympic funding), and 20th for golds.
So yeah, as I said before, it's hardly worth bragging about when you put it like that. I've seen so many "yeah but if you look at the population..." posts in the last week it's tiresome now.
Soldato
Let's not concentrate exclusively on medal haul. There are competitors who didn't get near the medals but they are not complete failures.
I know it isn't cool to say that taking part is of any value unless you WIN, like if you take an exam, anything less than an A* is worthless, but if you lose a race, hey, you were still in the race.
I prefer the opening ceremony parade of athletes as a measure of 'success' rather than just a medal count.
I know it isn't cool to say that taking part is of any value unless you WIN, like if you take an exam, anything less than an A* is worthless, but if you lose a race, hey, you were still in the race.
I prefer the opening ceremony parade of athletes as a measure of 'success' rather than just a medal count.
Soldato
Totally agree, but with us hosting the games it would be amazing if we could hold onto third place.
Russia has now overtaken us in total medals, but we have double their golds. I'm not sure exactly how it works but could we end up 4th at this rate?
Don't forget we have quite a few medals in the bag atm too, there's at least 6 that we're guaranteed silver or bronze in so far. First one is decided in the female boxing this afternoon in Nicola Adams final fight.
A couple more of ours got through to the quarters in Taekwondo this morning too, there's quite a lot of possibilities slipping through relatively unnoticed as they're not the big spotlight sports.
Man of Honour
If they get more golds than Team GB then they will or if they draw in terms of gold medals then due to a superior number of silver medals they will pull ahead. There was a bit of analysis mentioned on the text feed earlier to point out that Russia have typically done better in the events left than Britain has but the programme has been slightly rejigged since Beijing with some new events in there.
I'd not heard that before, where are you getting that from*? My understanding is that silver and bronze are there as tie-breakers effectively since it's golds that count for the purposes of the medal table. e.g. currently South Korea have 25 medals in total but because 12 of them are gold they are ahead of Russia who have 53 medals but only 11 golds or equally you could take a look at the positions of North Korea and Belarus.
It seems from a quick search of Wikipedia that the IOC doesn't officially rank teams but they do provide a medals table based on the gold first ranking.
*Ah the Australian Geography Teachers Association. It's an option but certainly not a commonly recognised one.
