Prior to the 2000 games I wasnt really old enough to take notice of the Olympics
I suppose having them in your own town changes your view on things, especially when your only down the road from one of the events (and worried about changing traffic conditions ...)
With Athens, unlike Sydney, I wasnt really "into it" until after it begun. Sorta 3 days earier the local radio station announced a competition where they start with $20 000 and bung on $1000 for every Aussie Gold and $100 for every bronze and silver. Naturally the tally ended at over $40 000 :rolleyes:
I didnt watch them, acctually on the second last night i switched to the basketball, and on the last night god knows what - I figured I may as well watch it before it finishes, little did I realise when i woke up the next morning it was well and truley over and the closing ceremony had also been televised and was over!
I spose what hurt us here in Aus was the fact all the major sports, especially those where Aus might win gold, were on at like 2 and 3 in the morning when its like 3 degrers celcius outside and we're all warm in our beds!
I did enjoy Fox 8's 6 hours of the simpsons nightly, I stayed up the last few nights because they were televising fairly new episodes i'd only seen once or twice before :rolleyes: . That was till last night when they were back to reality (I didnt know the oys had finished =(( ) and had WWE wrestling instead of the simpsons!
I just read in the paper from 2 days ago "final day of Athens - 16 page summary of the olympics" and saw a small "television guide update - Monday 4:30am closing ceremony" which is when it hit me its over, and last night ALL TV channels returned to its normal programming!
Ah well, lets look forward to the next 4 years -^
chris
08-30-2004, 07:43 PM
I didn't mind the Olympics at all.
There were a few very close matches in the hand-ball competition. Especially between the Danish and the South Korean team.
And who could forget Anatoly Karpol, the coach of the Russian women's volleyball team.. Very fiery character that one.. :eek:
And surprisingly, I watched none of the swimming events.. The advantage of having two TV stations co-broadcasting the Olympics. SBS however did a much better job than Channel 7. :)
Myshkin
08-30-2004, 08:58 PM
-^ to Greece for surpassing everyone's expectations. Nothing better than seeing the twits in the press eating their words :)
And congrats to Oz for kicking everyone's butt, when you look at it from a medals-per-capita point of view, even beating their Sydney showing.
And watch out for China and Japan... anyone want to take early bets that China challenges and possibly surpasses Russia and the US at Beijing in 2008?
Wazza
08-30-2004, 11:20 PM
I watched many events.. It was my highlight of the past 2 weeks. :)
Much enjoyed watching NZs 3 winning gold. Not too bad for a country of 4 million. :)
VQ
08-31-2004, 12:29 AM
I ignored it as usual, I was aware of the atlanta olympics, but only through school, I don't care for it, other then Judo. But I didnt watch it.
monaro
08-31-2004, 03:08 AM
has anyone noticed how much australia bloody rules, 20 million population with 49 medals? by my rough calculations, if USA had of won the amount of medals per population of AUS, they would have about 710 medals with 246 of them being gold
Y2kGoofball
08-31-2004, 03:21 AM
acctually "Merrick" from Merrick and Rosso has been working it out the past 2 weeks and yesterday worked out "How goods Australia when ...", his strongest point has been comparing the number of people to medal ratio
although I did enjoy when he rang England on the 3rd day and gave them heaps and the guy said "well it wasnt like that in the rugby was it? cheerio" and hung up (and Merrick being a Holden man said "no, but it wasnt like that in the Bathurst 24 hour either when your Monaro beater carked it half way through)
Then he rang a few days back, which they've been playing a reply of quite often "Hello, a few days back I rang with a scoop - would you like it? Comparing Australias medal tally to Great Britains youve got to admit you guys arent doing so well, now words have been thrown around like stuffed, sh!thouse, buggered"
ah, always ready for a laugh them too
chris
08-31-2004, 06:00 AM
Australia might be doing well, but look what happens when something goes wrong.. Need I mention the rowing event.. Talk about being unsporting. That was a disgrace the way they acted.
Little wonder they were shown the riot act..
Myshkin
08-31-2004, 09:55 AM
Monaro, you can't quite look at it as a direct comparison, because obviously the US does not field 15 times the athletes as Australia, and China does not field 5 times the number of US athletes... the way you should look at it is, statistically, if you have a greater population, the odds are higher that you have a greater number of good athletes, and chances are higher that your best is the world's best, everything else being equal (which it isn't).
China may have a greater population, but until lately they have not been rich enough to spend the money needed on training... relatively speaking of course. Russia has a much smaller population than the USSR did, now they are hardly half the population of the US. But either way the numbers of athletes that represent a country are not directly based on their population.
Heh I could point out that Estonia, with 1.4 million people, managed 3 medals. That would give them 1 medal per 466,000 people, while Mexico ONLY had 1 medal per 25 million people (4 medals, 100 million pop.). While this is great fun in order to annoy my wife and her family (hehe) I am quite aware that the comparisons are not valid.
Heh, you see why such comparisons, while interesting statistically, are not really valid as a direct comparison?
Looking at it this way, Russia did the best (of the top five anyway) in terms of efficiency. Australia may have won alot of medals compared to their population, but they did it by sending as many athletes to the Olympics as the large population countries did.
Myshkin
09-01-2004, 12:02 PM
Good call, Justin... I did not think to actually find the numbers of athletes. But at least your numbers support my point :)
Edit: More interesting comparisons
USA 35 golds, 614 athletes, 17.54 apgw
Russia 27 golds, 514 athletes, 19.04 apgw
China 32 golds, 416 athletes, 13.00 apgw
Australia 17 golds, 513 athletes, 30.18 apgw
Germany 14 golds, 512 athletes, 36.57 apgw
apgw = athletes per gold won
Check that out... one of every 13 Chinese athletes fielded won gold this year.
Where'd you get the numbers of athletes? I am still looking, would like to see the top 10 apgw :)
Where'd you get the numbers of athletes? I am still looking, would like to see the top 10 apgw :)
http://sports.yahoo.com/oly/countries
Go here, click on a country, then Athlete Index, and the list will tell you how many athletes are participating from that country.
I did the "afpmw" calculations myself for those seven, not sure if there's something similar that someone has done for every country. That would be more interesting than the Olympics themselves. :D