London Summer Olympics 2012

So seeing as it's just around the corner, I thought we should have an official thread for it.

To kick us off, here's the first of five official olympic songs by band Muse (incidentally my favourite band, funny that)

"Survival"
It's very queen esque

[video=youtube;Jt__jKWoYH8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt__jKWoYH8[/video]

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China will send 396 athletes in 23 sports to the upcoming London Olympic Games, it was announced on Tuesday.

The team, consisting of 171 men and 225 women athletes, will also be accompanied by 225 officials for the Games which start on July 27.

According to the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC), China will be represented in 23 of 26 sports at the Summer Games after it has failed to qualify for soccer, equestrian and handball.

A total of 29 Beijing Olympic titlists, including badminton star Lin Dan, swimming ace Liu Zige and sharpshooter Du Li, will lead the team at the quadrennial games.

Li Changchun, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, on Tuesday encouraged the athletes to do their best at the London Games and make the country proud again.

At Beijing 2008, host China sent its biggest-ever Olympic team of 639 athletes who finally won 51 gold medals, and stunned the world by standing on top of the medal table on home soil.

By winning 51 golds, 21 silvers and 28 bronzes, China also relegated the mighty United States to second place.

Now China will look to extend its domination to London as the squad has been strengthened by comeback men's 110m hurdling star Liu Xiang and swimming prodigy Sun Yang.

But China's sports head Liu Peng said China will face strong challenges in repeating the feats of Beijing Olympics and has warned against complacency. "The athletes from around the world have worked very hard for the Games and they are so eager to make breakthrough and win medals, so the competitions will be hotly contested," said Liu, head of the Chinese General Administration of Sport.

"The Chinese athletes must get fully prepared and ready to face the challenges. We have to fight for each gold."

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I think I will challenge the accuracy of the reporters article concerning weight lifing. In the "Time article she says"To increase China’s medal count, the country’s sports bureaucrats have developed a winning formula: target less popular disciplines contested by fewer countries; choose sports that offer multiple medals, like for different weight classes; and focus on women, whose athletic efforts are underfunded in most countries."
For a start why would a country put so much emphasis on a sport where a country can only contest four of the seven weight classes quote ". (There are seven weight classes in women’s weight lifting; each country is allowed to enter four categories.)"Just imagine if a country could only enter half the swimming rowing or track and field events.
In short , including the mens team , there now appears to be 14golds up for grabs with each country only allowed to compete in 57% of the events?
Back in the old days there were three golds per event , one each for the snatch, clean and jerk, and the combined total winner.
Therefore the sport as medal winning goes, doest appear to be as good a value as it once was.




"The Wild West may have made the confrontations famous, but pistol dueling made an appearance at the Olympics, during the unofficial 1906 Intercalated Games held in Athens. Confusingly, the event consisted of no actual dueling as individuals merely shot at plaster dummies dressed in frock coats from a distance of 20 or 30 meters. It may sound bizarre, but an Australian poll held before Sydney 2000 found that 32% wanted to see the sport revived at the Summer Games."

Yup and the contestants should be our nations leaders, but not shooting at targets but each other at 30 paces.

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The attempt to analyze how China goes for gold is to make the effort less. Why do they care unless they're doing the exact same thing and just counting medals? So why don't they eliminate the sports they consider less gold than others? So who's the one only caring about winning if some gold is not as valuble as others?

There have always been insults since China entered a team for the first time at the 1984 Olympics. Like charging Chinese athletes would get TVs sets as motivation to win gold. Like million dollar endorsements doesn't motivate Western athletes? I remember reading after the Atlanta games someone created a new syndrome for athletes that won medals but got not much attention or rewards afterwards. It must be prevalent enough to give a name (I forget exactly what they called it but it was similar to postpartum depression) to the disorder. The same theme about heart used against China always keeps coming. Is not getting rewarded about heart and passion for the sport or is it about money and celebrity? How convenient they leave that out as motivation for China's competition. And Andre Agassi hated playing tennis and was just a sport he played to appease his father. Is their heart with a sport where the athlete uses performance enhancing drugs? And I'm not talking about China because again it's already been charged like the article that China doesn't have passion for sports. I've mentioned before about how during the last Olympics a couple of journalists wrote articles bewildered that Chinese worshipped Kobe Bryant and not Lance Armstrong. What's more bewildering is how they think Chinese are suppose to worship someone they never even heard of in a sport not popular in China. It's quite clear there's a case now that Lance Armstong cheated. It must mean he didn't have passion for the sport if the only thing that mattered was winning.

Just as right before the last Olympics, the media is making excuses for losing already.

AssassinsMace your post above is well written..very well done.

Guys I know it's hard for many of you but let's in the next few weeks just enjoy the spectacle of the London Olympics without dragging politics into the discussion. After all they are just games.

Do not respond to this post.

bd popeye super moderator

China having more gold medals than silver and bronze combined shows a specialization. That is, in the sports that they are good at, they are the best.

I think it's pretty evident that two factors influence the number of medals a country gets at the Olympics: the country's population base, and the country's GDP.

The difference in the medal counts between the USA and China is not so surprising. Both countries have a large population base and strong GDP, but the US funds its athletes privately, while China does so with a state organization. Obviously, a bunch of private sponsors will not have the kind of planning that a single state organization has. So both countries get a lot of medals, but the US's medals is spread across more disciplines, while China's medals are in a more select set of disciplines, but they perform better in that set.

I would be really surprised if China can repeat Beijing's performance. After all, Beijing was China's first hosted olympics, the psychological motivation from that is just enormous.

solarz said:

China having more gold medals than silver and bronze combined shows a specialization. That is, in the sports that they are good at, they are the best.

I think it's pretty evident that two factors influence the number of medals a country gets at the Olympics: the country's population base, and the country's GDP.

The difference in the medal counts between the USA and China is not so surprising. Both countries have a large population base and strong GDP, but the US funds its athletes privately, while China does so with a state organization. Obviously, a bunch of private sponsors will not have the kind of planning that a single state organization has. So both countries get a lot of medals, but the US's medals is spread across more disciplines, while China's medals are in a more select set of disciplines, but they perform better in that set.

I would be really surprised if China can repeat Beijing's performance. After all, Beijing was China's first hosted olympics, the psychological motivation from that is just enormous.

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Well, I would think the US also funds athletes as a govn't. Many athletes got their training while in high school and college and use facilities at these schools. Most of these schools are public schools, which are supported by tax payers. In that sense, many American athletes are also supported by the states.

vesicles said:

Well, I would think the US also funds athletes as a govn't. Many athletes got their training while in high school and college and use facilities at these schools. Most of these schools are public schools, which are supported by tax payers. In that sense, many American athletes are also supported by the states.

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True, and we can see this difference in the strength of the US's swim team, where China is relatively weak. Swimming pools simply aren't very common in China, especially in the northern provinces.

Every major country rewards their athletes in some way. I just saw on TV that US athletes that win a gold medal get $40,000 from the United States Olympic Committee which helps train and fund athletes. Much lower than some others that go into high six figures but then it's offset with commercial endorsements where they make much more. One smaller country gave a bar of gold as extra incentive.

AssassinsMace said:

Every major country rewards their athletes in some way. I just saw on TV that US athletes that win a gold medal get $40,000 from the United States Olympic Committee which helps train and fund athletes. Much lower than some others that go into high six figures but then it's offset with commercial endorsements where they make much more. One smaller country gave a bar of gold as extra incentive.

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In the Barcelona Olympics every Gold that a Spanish athlete won they received $1 million (From a Governemnt/Private sector fund). Sounds like a pretty good incentive to me.