Those figures i linked are for this years games, which are only about half-way through. If you look at Brazil’s figures for previous Olympics, they are a bit higher up the list. It could be that many of Brazil’s stronger events come in Week 2. They’re very likely to medal, with a good shot at gold, in both men’s and women’s soccer on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively. Let’s see where they come out.
Also, for whatever reason, some countries can have a bad Olympics. Medal favorites and world champions can underperform on the big day. I know, for example, that there are a few Australian swimmers who are current world champions and who were expected to win (or at least vie for) gold at these games, and who failed to medal at all in their events. Sometimes shit just happens.
I guess, too, that the correlation between national wealth and Olympic success might be affected not simply by overall wealth, but by the amount of money that a national government is willing to commit to its Olympic athletes. I’ll bet, for example, that none of the top North Korean athletes go hungry as part of their game preparation, despite the country’s abysmal conditions. Same for quite a few other countries.
Even rich countries can spend disproportionately. After Australia had an abysmal games in Montreal, the government put hundreds of millions of dollars into the creation of the Australian Institute of Sport. It doesn’t just focus on Olympic athletes, but it essentially acts as a funnel for public money and outsized attention to elite athletes in all sorts of sports. The AIS has been credited with improving Australia’s performance on the international stage in a variety of different sports. Some critics have argued that, just as the Aussie government expects college grads to pay back their government-subsidized tuition fees through the tax system, athletes who end up making millions of dollars should face a similar tax levy to reimburse some of the public money spent helping them become successful.
China has a ton of problems, but I’d like to see them overcome them to become a world leader in R&D.
The world has a lot of problems that need to be solved. Problems in medicine, energy, AI, consumer electronics, transportation, etc. etc.
China has been the biggest investor in renewables for a while, investing about as much as the US & Europe combined.
China is also helping to industrialize Africa.
Under ideal conditions, China will within a few decades contribute as much science and technology to the world at 10 Japans. The world has a lot of problems and China has a lot of potential to help humanity solve them.
I don’t know a lot about China, but in between the poverty, income inequality, academic culture of rote memorization, lack of quality control, corner cutting, corruption, scientific fraud, political oppression, etc. who knows when China will rise to the same standards as South Korea, Taiwan or Japan.
I’d like to think by the 2030s, but that could just be wishful thinking.
If shitting on your neighbors’ lawns would give you effective title to their property, you might not think it’s so bad.
Looking at this another way, it’s building military might through belligerence. China knows no power will go to war over this relatively trivial matter, and they’ll get away with it. It’s a lot like their extreme Internet censorship.
And that is why Britain currently sits in second place in the medals table. After a dismal Atlanta Games, the Government decided to follow Australia’s lead, setting up UK Sport which funnels money from the National Lottery to specific olympic sports, facilities and athletes. The results speak for themselves.
Assuming we are all alive in 50 years. Personally, I think China is digging it’s own grave and it’s just a matter of time before they crash and burn. At least as long as the CCP is in charge.
But I do agree, they have come a long way in a short time, and are basically number 2 in the medal count atm…and have been getting stronger and stronger at this Olympics thingy over the past several games (of course, it helps when you can force kids to train and take the cream of those kids and toss the rest out if they don’t make the cut). But I don’t think that winning medals is really a good metric for all that’s either wrong or right with a country, and there are plenty of real things to ding China about than how many medals they did or didn’t win. Heck, just wrt Olympics I’d go with that practice of forcing kids to train and tossing out those who don’t make the grade, as well as just the way their program is run and works. Pretty icky IMHO…makes the Soviets and the old Warsaw guys good.
