And all the coaches were bald men. But really it was one bald man, Benoit Richaud. He’s coaching 16 skaters from 13 countries. He literally changed hats and jackets each time he’s sitting next to his skaters. He’s French but I don’t doubt he uses English as a common language for many of them. From what I can see he’s currently training out of Italy but has also trained in Lake Placid.
It’s not. My point is that Canada generates a lot of athletes in a sport where the number of medals we can win is limited to two.
Ah, where the two are the men’s and women’s events.
You also automatically get an athlete in every event. It’s one bonus in hosting.
I thought that the best competitor from every nation automatically made it in (even if the second-best didn’t qualify). Isn’t that how the Jamaican bobsled team got in? Or is that only for team sports?
Even if that’s not the way it works, it should be. Every country should be able to be represented in every event.
I think that was the case a long time ago. I think Eddie the Eagle or other unqualified athletes helped make sure they have a qualification requirement.
The topic is discussed at length in this other thread. Short answer: how people and teams qualify varies by sport, but in general, it seems like the individual sport governing bodies now try to not have clearly unqualified athletes compete.
Generally speaking, AIUI, each event has some level of limit as to how many athletes/teams qualify, for logistics, if nothing else.
As mentioned, Eddie the Eagle put the kibosh on that rule. It was sneeringly called “Olympic Tourism” and immediately banned after Eddie competed. He was far behind even the next-to-last jumper. But they still made a movie about him.
I watched a special report on ski jumping in Sweden (?) last night. They start training at 4 years old. Those youngest skiers don’t even stand, they sit on their little skis and sail over a 12” hill jump point and travel about 4 feet.By the time they are 6 they have a slightly bigger hill. And another, larger hill when they are 8. And so on.
It’s just like tikes starting with T-ball in the US and working their way up to 100 mph pitches.
Well, not entirely. Don’t forget about the snowboarder from 2018 who figured out how to get into the Olympics just by not falling.
This year, there were 24 quota spots available for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in women’s ski halfpipe. But those spots don’t automatically go to the best 24 skiers in the world. The maximum number of skiers that each nation can send to the Olympics for women’s halfpipe is four, so a country like the U.S. — which had six skiers ranked inside the top 20 of the Olympic qualification standings — could only send their top four skiers, even though they had more than four athletes who earned quota spots.
So with countries like the U.S. having to forego their extra quota spots, some countries not using all their quota spots, and other athletes pulling out due to injury, the invite list made it all the way down to athlete No. 34 in the rankings: Elizabeth Swaney of Hungary.
Or Rachael Gunn in 2024. She competed in the breakdancing competition (the first and so far only time they’ve had that as an Olympic event; it won’t return in 2028) and received zero points across 3 different performances. So yeah, it still happens depending on the circumstances.
The Jamaican bobsled team was the same year. There was a real concern of death or serious bodily injury. They took things seriously and have improved since and have qualified for the Olympics in multiple years. They now also have a woman’s team.
I remember there were always stories of incredibly slow runners being eliminated in early rounds and other similar stories. The impetus for change was when it was in sports like ski jumping or bobsled when we might witness instant death on live tv.
That is hilarious. I genuinely feel at the same level as an olympian, if not better!
I can definitely remember there being some comically slow ‘sprinters’ in the 100m in… I want to say Atlanta 1996. I played ‘guess the slowest runner’ with a friend and I kid you not some were struggling to break 14 seconds.
se Italian medal count
Rachael Gunn is a different case, as she legitimately seems to have scammed her way in. There are, and I’m guessing low, THOUSANDS of better break dancers in Australia, but her little club decided who got to go. The Hungarian lady who got into the skiing event actually busted her ass to go compete and earn points on the world circuit, and no one else in Hungary did or could be said to be any better.
And logistics. It’s not hard to let a few more people run the 100 metre dash and it’s in keeping with Olympic spirit. But you can’t have, say, 64 hockey teams, you’d never be able to get all the games in.
UPDATE: Well, the red maple guys and gals are doing pretty good. They now have 4 golds and 16 medals overall. They are in the 2nd tier of countries after the top medal winners.
It might have been, in part, simply a matter of when certain events’ finals were being held.
You started this thread this past Sunday (i.e., at the end of the first week of the Games), and I know that, for example, a lot of the speed skating events – in which other countries, like the Netherlands and Norway, as noted upthread – had their finals fairly early in the Games.
Perhaps the most extreme example is in the1980 Winter Olympics, where Hanni Wenzel of Liechtenstein won two gold medals and a silver (in alpine skiing, of course). Her brother Andreas also won a silver medal that year. Those two individuals, all by themselves, made Liechtenstein one of the top medal producing nations in the world, on a per capita basis.
Here are some tables: