Go Team USA!

[Firetooth]

I'm actually quite excited for the closing ceremony. I mean, sure one direction and the spice girls are there, but between Muse, George Michael, a cover of wish you were here, The Who, Ray Davies and Madness, it's going to be pretty good.

Oh, and there's this. Ok, Jessie J  :-X but a Freddie Mercury hologram?

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/freddie-mercury-star-closing-ceremony-102001022.html

[Rakefur]

Jamaica is beast at sprinting... :P

Men's marathon is in, big upset, Uganda takes gold, Kenya silver/bronze. Lone American outkicks Brazil and Japan for fourth, other 2 Americans drop out about 18k in.

^I woke up like 7:50 am, went downstairs, everyone was clustered around my brother's computer watching.

[Firetooth]

Jamaica is beast at sprinting... :P

On the topic of Jamaican sprinters:

sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--usain-bolt-to-get-tryout-with-manchester-united-after-olympics.html

[Gen. Volkov]

Yay for reinforcing American stereotypes!

Eh, it's just fun to twit the Brits and other commonwealth folk. I don't actually care. There's one sport I care about, and it's not played in the Olympic games.

Alrighty, I'm gonna be totally politically incorrect here. China of course have the most intensive training and recruiting system, but they're all Asian and are still going to be strongest in the sports typically suited to a prototypical Asian body-type. USA and GB have a more diverse ethnic pool, (i.e. black and white people) and therefore have a broader scope of success - particularly in track, where China have only won medals in the walking. If the USA and GB spent as much money and were as crazy in terms of training regimes as China, then they would kick China's [Behind].

Well, China has like 1.3 billion people. I'm pretty sure that out of all those folks, they can find athletes to come close to matching the natural talents of the more diverse ethnic pools of some of the countries they face. That said, if GB and particularly the US were more dedicated to winning as many events as possible in the games, they could probably still beat China. In both countries, the absolute best athletes don't actually go to the Olympics, in the US they go to football and in Britain they go to soccer. Football has many of the same requirements to play as a track and field athlete needs, and so in the US the rule of thumb is, if you can't play football for whatever reason, you run track. I think the same is true of soccer in Britain. If the US and GB were dedicated enough to pull those athletes out of football and soccer, we'd probably send much more dominant contingents to the games. Though the US would probably still be more dominant, because it has a larger population and is more diverse than GB. GB is like 90% white, 85% of which are British.

[Rakefur]

Jamaica is beast at sprinting... :P

On the topic of Jamaican sprinters:

sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics--usain-bolt-to-get-tryout-with-manchester-united-after-olympics.html

Haha I'd laugh if he actually got in AND agreed to play.

[Genevieve]

He probably told the interviewers from all the countries the same thing.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/sport/cricket/warne-part-of-plan-to-give-bolt-a-bash-at-twenty20-20120812-2433e.html

[Holby]

Yay for reinforcing American stereotypes!

Eh, it's just fun to twit the Brits and other commonwealth folk. I don't actually care. There's one sport I care about, and it's not played in the Olympic games.

Rhythmic gymnastics is already at the Olympics.

[Rakefur]

Yay for reinforcing American stereotypes!

Eh, it's just fun to twit the Brits and other commonwealth folk. I don't actually care. There's one sport I care about, and it's not played in the Olympic games.

Rhythmic gymnastics is already at the Olympics.

Oh I thought he meant synchronized swimming.

[Shadow]

He said NOT at the olympics. It's probably synchronized golf.

[Rakefur]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsSPTst7yNI&feature=player_embedded
That?

[Gen. Volkov]

Rhythmic gymnastics is already at the Olympics.

I said that I care about, not that you care about.

[Death]

is it over yet? it'll be nice when everyone stops pretending to care

[Gen. Volkov]

Relevant:



Rah Rah, MURICA!

[Shadow]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/datablog/interactive/2012/aug/07/olympics-2012-alternative-medal-table-visualised

Normalizing by team size is probably the most meaningful way to do it. I like their weighting system, as well.

Ranking goes:

China
Jamaica
Iran
Botswana
US

I don't actually care about the olympics at all (why would any county ever volunteer to host them..?), but I do care about people being ignorant of the actual meaning of statistics they are looking at. Total medal count is almost completely meaningless as a measure of anything, and it annoys the hell out of me that people are still on about it. You should know better, Volk.

Media coverage isn't helping at all, I guess they are worried about alienating their viewers if they use phrase more complicated than "look, shiny!". Props to the Guardian for actually publishing that, but really the default ranking system should be a little more complex.

Mars, now that's pretty cool.

[Rakefur]

I think there should be some sort of weighted point system, but hey! We got most golds too.

You can't deny we are the best.