Rio Olympic Games 2016

[Ron Manager]

Whatever happened to Peri Shakes Drayton? She seems to have gone off the radar.Has she given up through injury or perhaps was over hyped by the press?

[fredm]

Third position where the top two are USA and China is very good indeed. I know it's about a million pounds per medal but nothing inspires our future generations like winning so well done all involved. 

Eh? I thought we finished second, behind USA and in front of China?

[paul_e]

Third position where the top two are USA and China is very good indeed. I know it's about a million pounds per medal but nothing inspires our future generations like winning so well done all involved. 

Eh? I thought we finished second, behind USA and in front of China?

China got more total medals but we got more golds and silvers.  We're 2nd officially but some sites have just reported the medal count and have us 3rd.

Olaf you're a long way short with your valuation, it's closer to £4m per medal, the head of UK sport gave that very figure at the weekend.  However even at that level I agree with you that it's worth every penny.

With regard to school sport, schools are still in receipt of what is known as the Sports Premium.  It is actually reasonably generous and has the potential to give greater and wider opportunities to all children and also to the more talented.  Unfortunately, far too often at primary level it is used to bring in an outside coach to deliver P.E. lessons allowing the class teacher their contracted non-contact time without the need to employ another teacher to cover it (as a result of the squeeze on other areas of the school budget).  I'm certainly not decrying children getting an hour a week of coaching from, say, a basketball specialist, but I rather they were paid to deliver that as an extra-curricular hour in addition to the P.E. lesson delivered by the class teacher. 

See again this is what I mean about the way sport in education is handled.  Throwing extra lottery funding into the mix won't help.  There needs to be a fundamental shift in education policy to a point where areas which are difficult to measure teacher performance are given just as big a priority as subjects where the government can produce stats and tables.

[LeeS]

Third position where the top two are USA and China is very good indeed. I know it's about a million pounds per medal but nothing inspires our future generations like winning so well done all involved. 

Eh? I thought we finished second, behind USA and in front of China?

China got more total medals but we got more golds and silvers.  We're 2nd officially but some sites have just reported the medal count and have us 3rd.

We are not anything 'officially' because there is no such thing as the official medal table. In fact, the IOC has said in the past that it doesn't recognise medal tables and doesn't encourage them. It is even documented as such in the IOC charter. Different countries and different media present things for their own audiences. In the US, for instance, the convention is total medals - meaning they see China as 2nd and us as 3rd.

[paul_e]

Then they should probably tell themselves as much because if you go to the website for rio 2016 - https://www.rio2016.com/en/schedule-and-results - and click on medals on the left you get a fairly clear medal table in the format that I called official.  That's why I said it that way because that's what their own website reports.

[LeeS]

Then they should probably tell themselves as much because if you go to the website for rio 2016 - https://www.rio2016.com/en/schedule-and-results - and click on medals on the left you get a fairly clear medal table in the format that I called official.  That's why I said it that way because that's what their own website reports.

They provide it for information purposes only. And they do say that. The IOC charter is as clear as day. Medals are awarded to individuals and not countries. So although they provide a list of winners in lots of formats, they do not determine winners or runners up in the medal table. So there is no official 2nd place. Which is great as it allows us to debate it on a football forum 😄

[paul_e]

I get what you're saying and I agree that fundamentally athletes win medals not countries but I'm afraid i'm calling bullshit.  If they put a medal table ranked by country on their own website then they implicitly support it as a concept regardless of what they say.  If they don't wan to have a table then just put every country in alphabetical order and list the number of medals they got, gives the same info but removes the implication of 'winning'.

[LeeS]

I get what you're saying and I agree that fundamentally athletes win medals not countries but I'm afraid i'm calling bullshit.  If they put a medal table ranked by country on their own website then they implicitly support it as a concept regardless of what they say.  If they don't wan to have a table then just put every country in alphabetical order and list the number of medals they got, gives the same info but removes the implication of 'winning'.

I think there is just an issue of semantics, I perceive a difference between, "here is a list of medals won by country, ranked in order" versus, " here is the official medal table and the winner is..."  Especially when the IOC themselves are very explicit in saying they do not recognise the medal table has having anything other than an information basis and it is not official.

The Olympic Charter, Chapter 1, section 6 states that:

"The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries..."

The Charter goes even further in Chapter 5, section 57, expressly prohibiting the IOC from producing an official ranking:

"The IOC and the OCOG shall not draw up any global ranking per country"

But I accept that in a stats obsessed world we will naturally look to these tables as an indicator of success.

[paul_e]

I get what you're saying and I agree that fundamentally athletes win medals not countries but I'm afraid i'm calling bullshit.  If they put a medal table ranked by country on their own website then they implicitly support it as a concept regardless of what they say.  If they don't wan to have a table then just put every country in alphabetical order and list the number of medals they got, gives the same info but removes the implication of 'winning'.

I think there is just an issue of semantics, I perceive a difference between, "here is a list of medals won by country, ranked in order" versus, " here is the official medal table and the winner is..."  Especially when the IOC themselves are very explicit in saying they do not recognise the medal table has having anything other than an information basis and it is not official.

The Olympic Charter, Chapter 1, section 6 states that:

"The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries..."

The Charter goes even further in Chapter 5, section 57, expressly prohibiting the IOC from producing an official ranking:

"The IOC and the OCOG shall not draw up any global ranking per country"

But I accept that in a stats obsessed world we will naturally look to these tables as an indicator of success.

The bold bit is the problem, that's exactly what they've done on their own website because they have a medals table and headline it with 'top 5', that's a ranking by nation so their own website breaks their charter.  That's not semantics it's quite clearly what they've done.

As I say, I don't feel all that strongly either way but the official website for the games having a 'top 5' medal table with GB in 2nd is an official placing for the country, the charter doesn't really matter at that point, anyone looking for an official placement for their country in the medal tables will look on that website and find it.

[cdbearsfan]

Third position where the top two are USA and China is very good indeed. I know it's about a million pounds per medal but nothing inspires our future generations like winning so well done all involved. 

Eh? I thought we finished second, behind USA and in front of China?

China got more total medals but we got more golds and silvers.  We're 2nd officially but some sites have just reported the medal count and have us 3rd.

We are not anything 'officially' because there is no such thing as the official medal table. In fact, the IOC has said in the past that it doesn't recognise medal tables and doesn't encourage them. It is even documented as such in the IOC charter. Different countries and different media present things for their own audiences. In the US, for instance, the convention is total medals - meaning they see China as 2nd and us as 3rd.

I'm pretty sure America only adopted that "convention" when they finished below China on golds but above them on total medals.

The general consensus is you rank by gold, then silver, then bronze.

[ADVILLAFAN]

I think they should do it on points:-

3: Gold
2: Silver
1: Bronze

Or 5,3 and 1.

The current system means that bronze medals become more or less irrelevant.

[cdbearsfan]

It should be 4, 2 and 1. Then the number of points gained in each sport should be divided by the number of medals available in said sport. That way you wouldn't have the ludicrous situation where being good at swimming is better than being good at about nine different sports.

Add all the totals together to get an overall score.

Merge the Winter and Summer Olympic Medal Tables while you're at it for a grand total to work out which is really top nation.

[four fornicholl]

If they had a double dutch America would have won another, Hey Ebo, Ebonettes!!!

[thick_mike]

If they had a double dutch America would have won another, Hey Ebo, Ebonettes!!!

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