Donald Trump Congratulates Lydia Ko

 

Gold Medals - Paris 2024

The Olympic games were a bit of a flop, but let's play one of those rank the countries differently games. The USA media rank countries by the total number of medals won. They do this to prevent their own country being shown, potentially, lower than first place. 

The accepted way of ranking is to do so by golds first, then silver, then bronze. Thus, Italy came ninth and Germany tenth. Italy received 12 golds, 13 silver, and 15 bronze, while Germany were 12 golds, 13 silver and eight bronze. 

In using this system, New Zealand came eleventh with ten golds, wedged between Germany and Canada below with its nine gold medals. To put this in context, NZ has 5 million people, while Germany has 84 million and Canada 39 million.

NZ's gold medal count amounts to 50% of all its medals. Is this the best country using that measure? No, it isn't, if we look at the list of countries, ranking them by percentage of total medals that are gold gives the following result:

1= Pakistan and Dominica (100%)

2= Algeria and Indonesia (66.6%)

3. Uzbekistan (61.5%)

4= Norway, Hong Kong, Philippines, Botswana, Morocco, New Zealand, Guatemala, Uganda, Saint Lucia, Chile (50%)

However, if we look at these countries and ask how many medals in total did they win, then NZ takes top spot as it won 20 medals, with Uzbekistan second with its 13 medals.

Countries that underperformed were the likes of Brazil and Poland. When you consider that Brazil hosted the Olympics as recently as 2016, they've really fallen away. Clearly, the games are not a priority for them.

The per capita method of ranking is often used, and this skews the result to small countries. For instance, Grenada comes first using this method, even though they did not win a gold. I'd rank per capita by gold only, then Dominica would be first, Saint Lucia second, but NZ would be high on that list too with one gold for every 500,000 people.

Anyway, I play around with this sort of thing as the games are a complete rort. I used to think the USSR rigging everything was bad, but now with the USA in the ascendency, they're even worse. I say, get rid of all events where judges decide the score. And stop skewing the distribution of medals. You don't see athletics having races for running backwards, hopping on two legs and then hopping on one - do you? OK, they have the race walks and triple jump, but generally it is run from A to B, first one there wins. Swimming has so many events, then they have mixtures of these events, then relays. This is done to pad the medal count. Stop doing that, it is annoying, simply race and the first to arrive wins, and who cares what swimming methods they use.

I'd also scrap most of the field events and replace them. The exception would be pole vault, I'd keep that. But new events I'd introduce: basketball goal shooting, and then accuracy ball throwing, using a hybrid baseball/cricket ball. How about a form of hybrid soccer/rugby ball goal kicking. People would get interested in events like that. We've seen rock climbing and skateboarding really taking off, the games have to evolve. 

And when we think about the old field events, they've banned so many ways of doing things that we know result in better performances; gone is the somersault long jump, the spinning javelin, cartwheel shotput and the high jumpers don't tumble. With the latter event, the Fosbury Flop is mostly used, but that doesn't gain maximum height, tumbling does. 

Oh, and Parkour would get people interested in the Olympics again, add that to the field events too.

Paris Olympics 2024

Will the Paris Olympics bore fest ever end? The swimming events usually finish at about the same time the Athletics start, but not with these Olympics, everything is just taking so long. 

The official website is also rubbish, very slow and it's hard to navigate.

Basically, the French really screwed up.

The only positive is that New Zealand currently sit above Canada on the medal table in eleventh place.  NZ has bettered the country's previous best gold medal haul at the 1984 games in Los Angeles. [Update: NZ has now gone to 10 gold medals, the first time it has hit double figures. NZ is now back to eleventh place on the medal table, sitting above Canada with nine gold medals.]

Interestingly, nearly all of NZ's gold medals apart from two (Finn Butcher - Canoe Slalom, and Hamish Kerr - High Jump) have come from the women. The NZ women are very good looking of course, and so watching them is easy on the eye, but come on men, ya slackers. Oh, and special mention to the women's Hungarian kayak sprint team who all appear to be supermodels.

Golfer, Lydia Ko came through for New Zealand, winning gold after previously winning silver (Rio) and bronze (Tokyo), so now she's completed the set. She's such a good competitor. She's hinted at retiring soon, but if she does, who can say she ever let New Zealand down? 

I may not follow future Olympics, they are now far too political, and the judging events are all rigged. I'm told that tourists no longer travel to watch the games, and locals hate having their cities disrupted. I wonder if the Olympics have a future?