Quote:
Originally posted by Lurch@Sep 7 2004, 09:25 AM
The other thing that people (and Canadians are just as guilty) ignore about Canada is that probably 1 in 2 of our best athletes concentrates solely on hockey (on the men's side at least). In Australia, they concentrate on swimming to a similar degree, i.e. swimmers are their athletic heros. One medal for hockey, about 80 for swimming. Another example - Norway. Their best athletes end up in cross country skiing, biathlon, etc. and they clean up at the Olympics. My thesis statement is that any country that concentrates its national energy on sports that aren't big Olympic sports will underperform relative to a country that concentrates on the Olympics. This also explains why the US underperforms relative to a lot of countries, including Canada, on a per capita basis. Football, baseball and basketball eat up a lot of amazing athletes, but produce 4 medals maximum.
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I've thought the same thing for a long time
how many total medals are awarded in swimming? LOTS. Australia is a summer nation, surrounded by water
Imagine if in the Winter olympics they had all of the following medal events: Slapshot, Wrist shot, target shooting, backwards skating (50 m), backwards skating (100 m), cross-over skating, bodychecking, breakaway, goalie saving, faceoffs, pylon deking, hockeyfighting, deflections, changing on the fly etc. Canada, and a select few other countries would eat up the medals
but it doesn't work that way. there seem to be a few sports, both summer and winter, that have a disproportionate amount of medals associated with them