Unofficial Olympics Thread

[Dingo Jellybean]

Obviously.

The USA have a far bigger crop of athletes to choose from when it comes to sending athletes to the Olympic Trials. Comparing the USA team to the British team for example, the USA has sent nearly 100 more competitors to the games, spanning a vast number of events! I think it is totally fair to say that America are always favourites because of the number of quality athletes to choose from. That's not a dig at American Sport at all. It's a compliment, you should be proud of your country's sportspersons and not undermine the institutions that make the American Olympic team not only one of the biggest, but certainly the best.

What I meant was that the US just has better athletes because they are better, not because there's more of them. You look at China, who has 396 athletes. Look at Australia, they have 489 athletes, yet look at the total gold and medals that China has compared to Australia...practically double that of Australia.

So the argument of "more to choose" from doesn't really account. The US simply has better athletes because they train harder, not because there's more of them. While the US has 647 athletes to China's 396, China is actually ahead on the current gold count, but trail in total medal count by only 5 medals. While China only sends 61% of the number of athletes to Athens compared to United States, they certainly have much more than 61% of the medals compared to the United States.

You look back 4 years ago in Sydney, Australia sent close to 500 athletes in Sydney compared to the US who sent about 620 athletes. The US won the total gold and total medal count with 97(39 gold) total medals. Australia only had 58 total medals with 18 gold.

Although I'm not accusing you of this, many people outside the US often claim that because the US has the most athletes, they win more medals. Completely untrue. You can go back to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and realize that the US took home 83(174 total medals) gold medals, the most dominant olympics in olympics history(winter or summer). Yet during that time, it was actually the former Soviet Union that sent the most athletes. They didn't even get 30 total medals, and 2nd place for total gold was like, 15 or something.