It's the first standoff in summer games history and it took a nail-biting U.S. women's basketball win, in the final action of Paris 2024, to make happen.
Large countries like to boast that their absolute number is bigger, it’s a tale as old as time.
If you really want to make comparisons (and I’d argue it’s really not that important) you should probably look at medals per capita, or medals per athlete sent. Obviously that gets a bit distorted with countries with small population, but I think it’s a more valuable number.
Being able to train that many gold medal athletes is still a worthy boast though. I’d rather countries compete on metrics like this rather than threaten each other with war
This is de facto extremely distorted, if not nullified, by the fact the collective sports (football, volley, etc) get 1 medal to each country, and solitary sports have multiple variants of the same competition that gives multiple medals to the same small teams or the same individuals (gymnastics, swimming, racing, etc). A nation that made 22 gold medalist athletes in football gets behind one that has made 2 gold medalists in swimming, gymnastics or racing. One of many such sport distortions in the Olympics.
For people who care about medal count (btw not me) it’s the whole point though to show that you are the biggest with the most people and the most resources. Not that you made the most of what you had or that you have the purest spirit.
Raw industrial capacity and soldier count have decided wars after all, so showing you can amass the most / biggest can hardly be said to be an empty boast. It’s a threat, really.
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Large countries like to boast that their absolute number is bigger, it’s a tale as old as time.
If you really want to make comparisons (and I’d argue it’s really not that important) you should probably look at medals per capita, or medals per athlete sent. Obviously that gets a bit distorted with countries with small population, but I think it’s a more valuable number.
By the medals per capita metric the USA is 47th, and China is 75th.
https://www.medalspercapita.com/
I can’t find a good list for medals per athlete sent.
Being able to train that many gold medal athletes is still a worthy boast though. I’d rather countries compete on metrics like this rather than threaten each other with war
This is de facto extremely distorted, if not nullified, by the fact the collective sports (football, volley, etc) get 1 medal to each country, and solitary sports have multiple variants of the same competition that gives multiple medals to the same small teams or the same individuals (gymnastics, swimming, racing, etc). A nation that made 22 gold medalist athletes in football gets behind one that has made 2 gold medalists in swimming, gymnastics or racing. One of many such sport distortions in the Olympics.
For people who care about medal count (btw not me) it’s the whole point though to show that you are the biggest with the most people and the most resources. Not that you made the most of what you had or that you have the purest spirit.
Raw industrial capacity and soldier count have decided wars after all, so showing you can amass the most / biggest can hardly be said to be an empty boast. It’s a threat, really.