One of the highlights of the Olympics is seeing where your country is in the medal table and it is no surprise to see the USA sitting at the top of the all time Olympic medal table with 2296 medals from 25 Games.What is surprising is that the Soviet Union which hasn't even existed since 1991 is in second place with 1010 medals from only 9 Olympics.
Great Britain have competed in all 26 Olympics and have 715 medals which sees them 4th behind Germany.
Australia only just about squeak in front of another country that has driven off into the sunset, East Germany, who are 10th with 409 medals from 5 Olympics while China have only taken part in 8 Olympics and have 385 medals and Russia have taken part in 4 and have 317.
At the other end of the table there is a large amount of countries that have never been on the rostrum to receive a medal of any colour, countries such as Bolivia who have no medals from 12 Olympics and Malta who have returned empty handed from 14 of the games and Burma who have zip from 15.
So as it stands, the USA is the Worlds greatest Olympic nation, or so you would think but if you average it out between medals won and games taken part in, America walk away with 91 medals from each Olympics but the Soviet Union on average made off with a back pocket full of 112 medals from the 9 Olympics they showed their faces at.
So the Soviet Union are, or where, the Worlds greatest athletes followed by USA and then East Germany so maybe there is something in this Communism thing when it comes to developing top athletes. Or more likely something to say about the poor drug testing before 1991.
3 comments:
The East Germans were the most notorious dopers up until the 1980s, before testing became widespread. The Russkies & the Chinese weren't good either - the Chinese were particularly known for giving their female gymnasts 'treatment' to delay the onset of puberty, which has left many of them unable to bear children today. Nice eh? In many ways then, it's not surprising that western athletes (who are probably the most well known drug cheats e.g. Johnson, Flo Jo) felt they had to take banned substances themselves, in order to compete.
Yup. The commies doped like hell and paid their athletes thru roundabout ways (i.e. putting them in the military when they play sports all day) when athletes were supposed to be non-professional.
Summer olympics schedules, medals details here - Olympics Medal Tally 2012
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