Interesting View on the Medal Table

[DaveW]

https://www.euronews.com/2024/07/29/par ... edal-table

[Blaze]

I'm always amused by the way the French call their silver medalists 'Vice champion". I don't think the bronzes get a look in.
It's the same in competitions : A French person doesn't come second, he or she is "vice champion.ne"

[exile]

Another view of the medal table that I have seen is to do the medal count per 1m inhabitants.

St. Lucia comes top followed by the Dominican republic.


Edit: Oops. that should have been Dominica not Dominican Republic.

[Biloute]

A small remark (not a criticism...). It is difficult to have precise figures, but, among the 408 French athletes, between 40 and 50% are military personnel and, among the medalists, it is between 50 and 60%... It is true that being in the army helps a lot for their training (equipment, material resources, time to train, etc...). A dedicated unit welcomes them (Joinville Battalion). Of course, this does not take anything away from their performances!
Apart from China perhaps, I do not know if foreign athletes are also helped by their country.
Another remark. Russian athletes were not allowed to participate because the Olympic committee wanted to punish Putin. It seems cruel to me towards them because they are not personally responsible for the war in Ukraine. If they had been able to participate, the ranking table could have been very different...
It seems really difficult to separate sport from politics.

[MAD87]

@Biloute Interesting POV. One of my grandsons, a young middle-distance runner, wants to join the alpine gendarmerie (he also climbs and surfs).
I know plenty of Olympians struggle to live whilst training, so the military - if available to them - must be attractive.

[Bayleaf]

Russian athletes were not allowed to participate because the Olympic committee wanted to punish Putin. It seems cruel to me towards them because they are not personally responsible for the war in Ukraine. If they had been able to participate, the ranking table could have been very different...
It seems really difficult to separate sport from politics.

We wondered about this in the Bayleaf household, but decided that it could have made security a problem - what if said Kremlin leader used the infiltration of his athletes to smuggle in the odd terrorist masquerading as part of the support team?

As to the counting of the medals. I like to include all the medal a country won - a medal is still a medal isn't it? Not just the golds.

[Biloute]

We wondered about this in the Bayleaf household, but decided that it could have made security a problem - what if said Kremlin leader used the infiltration of his athletes to smuggle in the odd terrorist masquerading as part of the support team?
As to the counting of the medals. I like to include all the medal a country won - a medal is still a medal isn't it? Not just the golds.

We could have asked the same question of security regarding many other countries (Iran or Israel for example).
Ukraine came 21st: maybe politically they didn't want Putin's Russia to have a better ranking?
It's still cruel for Russian athletes who train all year long!

[Pathca]

Given the former eastern blocs propensity to ‘ medically assist’ their performances perhaps it was a more balanced result without them!

[Blaze]

It seems really difficult to separate sport from politics.

I agree, Biloute, sport shouldn't used by politicians. Equally, athletes shouldn't use their position to promote a political view as in the case of Manizha Talash from the refugee Olympic team who displayed a cape with "Free Afghan Women" and was thus disqualified.

@Biloute It's understandable that many athletes are military, and not just in France. They are given the time and facilities to train and for obvious reasons this can be useful in their working life.
It is more than likely in some countries top level athletes have a more privileged life - every country wants to shine at something. This is apparently so for the North Korean women's football team : Encouraged by their leader, North Korean women are scouted at an early age and sent for training which means some are taken from a grim life in the country to a "better" life in Pyong Yang. This BBC article about the N Korean women's football team is interesting :
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/arti ... ngy9xjpzro

[Biloute]

It seems that some Russian and Belarusian athletes eventually participated as Neutral Individual Athletes, which in practice made them pretty much invisible since they don't even appear in the medal table...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individua ... r_Olympics