It looks like the final medal count for team GB will be 64, including 29 golds. So third in the ranking.
Revise that figure up by one. We have just won a silver medal in the women’s pentathlon.
Incredible. 29 golds and 65 medals in total is fantasy-land for us. We won Gold in 13 events, as many as China!
Highlight for me was Mo’s double and Usain Bolt’s good-natured dicking about.
Best athletic performance has to be Wenlock the mascot, for bouncing pretty much continuously throughout every race.
Yep, 29 Golds at £100 million a year for the last five years, plus £9 billion for the buildings.
“Incredible” indeed.
YES. THANK YOU. Finally, someone gets it. (Wow, I finally found a use for the quote function! :))
Well, the coverage isn’t quite over here in late-late time zone land, but for us, the answer to the OP is a resounding outstanding. Check it out: most golds and silvers, second most bronzes. There are a few tiny quibbles, most notably with the womens’ 4x100 relay (I’m willing to concede that there’s a possibility of wrongdoing, at the same time conceding that there’s a snowball’s chance in Kilauea Crater that any of them will ever get busted), but in all, our side kicked butt.
I’m glad for this, not out of nationalistic fervor (which died roughly two minutes into NBC’s '96 telecast), but because the issue is finally settled now and we can start talking about something else now. One of the most irritating things about Beijing was the idea that “everyone other than the United States agrees that China came out on top”. This bizarre sucking up to China (especially after all the pollution and human rights issues got completely swept under the rug) was aggravating. Well, folks, the country which invented reality TV and and turned the NFL draft into a sacred ritual and foist the Kardashians onto an unsuspecting world just aced the Olympics, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
At the same time, it’s a sobering wake-up call to China that the party is over and that the almighty capital-see Communism is no longer the free ride it once was. Let’s not sugarcoat it here. If the goal was to win the most gold medals, or simply the most medals, or get the best result according to some points system (and I’m perfectly fine with 4-2-1): fail, fail, and fail. They corralled the best athletes they could find, worked them to the gills, favored events where their natural agility and body control gave them an advantage, and constantly drove home a win win win mentality*…and it wasn’t enough. The lesson is clear: If you’re going to compete in the Olympics, it had better be for a reason other than outdoing the most driven, merciless sports machine in the world. Buddy, we don’t need Chairman Mao cracking the whip or ponying up the bucks; we do just fine on our own, thank you very much.
Hey, how about that clean sweep by the men’s basketball team? What a thrill ride that was, especially after the debacle of 2004 and all the talk about how our dominance was over and the rest of the world had caught up. Guess what, folks, an inch or a mile, every win counts the same. If anything, the rest of the world should be even more intimidated now, because they don’t have much room to improve. I just looked it up: Since 1948, a total of 17 Olympiads, we’ve only legitimately failed to win the gold twice (1972 was a robbery and 1980 was a boycott), 1988 and 2004. '88 was, of course, the last year we used amateurs and what really drove home the folly of that. '04, as far as I can tell, was just lousy timing; IIRC we had almost no actual superstar-caliber players and there was some serious morale and attitude issues.
Be interesting to see just what spin the various nations put on Rio now that the biggest storyline has a big coffin nail in it. Maybe now we can focus on individual athletes and events. Would definitely look forward to that.
- And again, I concede that doping may have also been a part of it, and possibly for Jamaica’s success in sprint events too, although it’s so prevalent at this point that there’s no point in singling out any one country.
I think £100 million a year for sports funding is a good deal. the amount of public money is actually only only about 30-40 million and the rest comes from the lottery. As we’ve seen from Atlanta onwards, the funding model is bearing fruit and I consider it a net benefit to the country.
If it encourages a greater degree of sporting participation then it is money well (and efficiently) spent.
The £9 billion for the games themselves is a separate issue.
Actually, outstanding is stretching it a bit. Total medals for the USA are about par compared to your historical record. China continue to improve (though naturally they gained a boost at their home games) Russia continue to decline and GB cement their improvements since Atlanta.
No nationalistic fervor in this post. None at all.
First off, thanks to GB for an amazing Olympics – likely the best in the past 20 years. Meaning the venues, the organization, opening and closing ceremonies & the fan support were simply flawless, right down to skipping the usual marathon route to the Olympic Stadium. Add that to your best Olympic performance ever, and there’s little to criticize.
Second best Games I’ve ever had the pleasure to enjoy – Barcelona '92 coming in first for obvious though admittedly subjective reasons reasons.
Spain’s total medal count: 17. Both a bit down from Beijing’s 19 overall and 5 Gold’s to 3.
That said, today’s Gold medal men’s Basketball game, was, to me, the highlight of these Games. Simply one of the best I’ve ever seen – and stats confirm it was the second closest in the past fourty years, after the '72 USSR/USA abomination. But beyond the score I was simply moved by the game itself; enjoyed it more than any other basketball game I’ve seen in years.
Congrats to the USA for once again fielding and playing the cream of the crop in the sport, and congrats once more for their gracefulness in victory – the sight of most/all US players and their legendary coach, Mike Krzyzewski, actually coming over to console a despondent though magnificent, Pau Gasol at the end of the game, was, to me, the height of the Olympic Spirit. I’ll also add that although the US was certainly the rightful winner of the Gold, for me, it was a Golden Silver for Spain. Couldn’t be prouder of those guys.
Awesome 17 days. Can’t imagine what I’ll do for entertainment till the 2012 WC.
Thanks again, London!
Nicely put. I accept the credit on behalf of all of London.
I know little of the game, but surely any team that can make the USA work so hard to win at basketball should be proud of itself.
I watched as much of the Games as I could and it was so much fun. Of course my favourite moments were the GB golds, especially in rowing and cycling which I just love watching for some reason. So I’m proud of Team GB’s performance but actually what I’m most proud of is the British people who, despite their almost constant cynicism about hosting the Olympics, their country and life in general, turned out in huge numbers to support all the competitors. It was great to see Julie Bresset get such a warm welcome at the mountain biking finish line yesterday, despite the audacity she showed in making Team GB’s Annie Last eat a considerable amount of her dust. The same goes for every event I saw.
I couldn’t agree more with DKW’s post about China. A lot of the stories about how China pushes their athletes so hard to get gold medals pissed me right the heck off. There was even a Chinese weightlifter who broke down in tears during his interview and apologized for disgracing the motherland… and he got silver.
China’s obsession with Olympic gold medals isn’t just completely missing the point of the Olympics… it’s unhealthy. And athletes who’ve failed to win gold (even those who’ve won a silver or a bronze) have even come home to find their houses vandalized! That crap ain’t right.
With most other nations, including my home country of the United States, you get the impression that most of the athletes are just happy to be there. (Obviously, though, we expect to win the gold in basketball, and to do otherwise is unacceptable). China, though… it’s bad enough that I’d be happy to give them a 10-year ban from Olympic competition (and allow Taiwan to compete under its real name) just to piss off the PRC and make them realize the folly of what they’re doing.
The Olympics may be over, but New Zealand has moved up a couple of places in the medals table today, because the Belarus athlete who won the women’s shot put has failed a doping test. And if you watched the women’s shot put, that probably does not come as a huge shock…
The most extreme example of this I know of is from the 1980 winter games in Lake Placid: Hanni Wenzel of Liechtenstein won three medals (two gold, one silver) in alpine skiing. All by herself she made the medals per population of Liechtenstein the highest of any country in Olympic history.
Yookeroo - Look, pal (and FYI, I don’t remember seeing you anywhere before), did you recall me saying one word about Michael Phelps? Whether he’s the greatest of all time, whether the number of events in swimming should count against him, whether this Lochte character has a legit beef, etc? No. I knew that once this Olympiad was done, he’d have the record for most medals. He’d have to fall down a manhole not to break the record. It was a done deal.
What wasn’t a done deal was the talk about how China was this great power and they kicked our butts in '08 and nothing can stop them and our days on the top were over etc. And this Olympiad put an end that. Nail in the coffin, badda-bing, turn out the lights, goodnight and drive home safely.
That’s what I find thrilling, the big score that settles the issue and shuts everyone the hell up. Evander Holyfield clobbering Buster Douglas and Mike Tyson. John Elway winning the Super Bowl. France stomping Brazil to win the World Cup. The Boston Red Sox going down 0-3 in the 'ALCS and then becoming unstoppable. The New York Rangers crushing the second most annoying curse in sports. Heck, add Rory McElroy winning the PGA Championship in record fashion. It’s over, it’s done, we’re finally free to get on with our lives.
We’re the best. You may or may not like it. You may or may not want to make a big deal out of it. You may or may not think it’s deserved. But regardless of what you think it’s a fact now.
Will we still be the best in Rio? Don’t know, don’t care. It’s all about amazing achievements, anyone, anywhere, for me now.
ekedolphin - Thanks for having my back here. I’d just like to add that there was a reason “You don’t win the silver, you lose the gold” was probably the most reviled Olympic commercial ever. A silver is a smaller achievement; it’s still an achievement. It’s not a “loss” of any kind.
As for the vandalism, well, I ask the same thing I always do: Who the hell are YOU to judge? You didn’t sacrifice your childhood in training. You didn’t whip yourself into shape and learn a complex physical skill under a demanding coach. You didn’t get in front of millions and pour your heart and soul into a contest where only the three best get anything. Your opinion means nothing. (Admittedly not as bad as the cases involving military service, but nearly as bad.)
This is very strange. I can promise you that outside of the USA this really wasn’t an issue for discussion. you did just about as well as you normally do. You did a lot better in your home Olympics, as did China at theirs, As did GB at ours.
It isn’t a very interesting story though. You are back in your usual position because you spend a lot of money and have a lot of people. Outside of swimming and athletics though you won less medals in the remaining 32 events than China, GB or Russia did. That suggests a lack of depth which may yet see you slip down the table unless you maintain your dominance in those 2 sports (two-thirds of your medals came in swimming and athletics)
More interesting in Rio will be the continued rise of China and how well Brazil does and whether Australia can kick themselves back into gear.
It wasn’t an issue for discussion IN the USA either. I have no idea what he’s on about.
Ps: I loved the Olympics and got pretty rah-rah about our team and STILL kind of want to hurl after reading that “you may not like it but we’re the BEST! F yeah!” stuff up there. Trust me, this was not how most Americans reacted to the Olympics, and this is literally the only place I’ve heard someone talking about how this was apparently a decisive victory over Chinese communism or whatever.
That all seems a little weird: welcome to 1980, or 1950 or something.
So not talking about Phelps or Lochte is some sort of evidence that it’s not about nationalistic fervor? Is that the logic here?
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It’s certainly not nationalistic fervor. It’s just that we’re the best and everyone else needs to shut up!
I barely remembered that China “kicked our butts” last time around.
Nitpick; “Olympiad” means “four years beginning the year a Summer Olympics is held.” This Olympiad doesn’t end until December 31, 2012. What we just finished are the Olympics.
As to your obsession with beating China, trust me, the other posters are right; nobody else cares. We aren’t impressed. That the USA finished first is a product of having many people in a very rich country, nothing more. That China challenged them for first is a product of the government putting big resources into it, nothing more. It would have meant absolutely nothing to me or anyone else with an ounce of maturity had China finished first, just as it meant less than nothing back when East Germany used to finish high in the standings. I wasn’t even paying attention to which country was in first.