Is AMERICA a mediocre continent?

Originally posted by bjarneorn

Originally posted by GD21D
More athletes, more medals.

That doesn't hold much water, does it ...

The only time, it might matter ... is if you have to compete "several" times to get to the finals. It's part of the competition. But nothing stops the US in providing several contestants for an event, never has ... that's entirely up to you. It's not uncommon, that one country has more than one contestant in the finals for one event.

edit on 11/8/2012 by bjarneorn because: (no reason given)

His comment holds a lot of water. Because instead of America sending just one team for each event as we do now we could send up to fifty teams for each event.

Considering that our country was started in 1609 from scratch. We are a young 403 years old country. I think we have achieved quite a few positive achievements during our history! We are not perfect and have no claims as such. We are a constant work in progress. The idea was to have freedoms and live in peace here. Congradulations to all the worlds gold medalists!

Originally posted by GD21D
More athletes, more medals.

That gave me an idea, see how things would sort out if we had a gold medals by number of athletes count.

The top 10 would be something like this:



And, if we look at the total number of medals per athlete:



It looks completely different.

The OP is sounding like a [color=cyan]BUTTHURT-BRIT who has an inferior-complex when it comes to America. You find that often here on these forums.

So many Brits seem to have their inferior-complex when it comes to the USA and I guess that is understandable when you consider the UK.

Besides, who CARES about such NONSENSE? This thread sounds like something a little immature child would come up with. So America is now a "Mediocre continent" because of Olympic medals???

Anyways, America cant win everything all the time. Once in a while we have to let others win to keep it exciting.

Don't know where you guys learned to count, but the official list per capita is here, where the US is a mere 44.

Medals per Capita

Where the EU, is in the same place as Denmark. With 625000 people, per medal. Where even Russa, Germany and Great Britain out perform the US, per capita by far.

Mere 44 ...

That's what the best of the best of the best can produce ... mediocre performance.

from what I hear from some experts on wrestling, USA olympic guys are getting screwed. I am far far from an expert but I trust a D1 coach and a guy who dedicated his life to making a high school/college/interview amateur wrestling site.

reply to post by bjarneorn


You'd also have to take into effect the number of opportunities. So if Europe has 80 medals and each of their states gets to compete, but countries that are either Federations or Republics like the USA, China and Russia have to consolidate you cannot compare them in this fashion. You'd have to let every American, Chinese and Russian State have their own NOC and be able to compete individually.

reply to post by ArMaP


That'd be poorly judged as well since the official "medal count" only counts events, and not actual medals (of which there are over 4,000 medals). So countries like say GB and the USA that have huge rowing teams that win gold medals only count as 1 gold medal yet comparing them to all those athletes it comes off as far, far lower per athlete than 1 gymnast. Another example is the American female water polo and soccer teams. All those players only amounts to 2 medals in the official count.

reply to post by Rockpuck


Any average is just that, an average, so it doesn't show the real "picture", but it's the best approximation we can do.

As for so many medals from European countries, Europe accounts for almost half of the approximate 10700 athletes in this year's Olympic games, so it's no wonder that Europe gets so many medals.

An interesting thing I found while looking for information about this, do you know which country had most athletes? Great Britain, with 541, 11 more than the United States.

reply to post by ArMaP


That is interesting. Nothing against Brits but when I think Britain I don't exactly think athletics lol.