EPTOn August 25 2016 06:22 bardtown wrote:
One of the funniest things I've ever seen was the EU acting like it had topped the medal tables by adding up the totals of all member states. I'd love to see what the US would achieve if it was able to field 20x more athletes.
No doubt it's about money - but which sports, exactly, are obscure? Equine events are probably the least affected by government funding, because they're practiced by hugely wealthy private individuals, and that has always been the case. If you came to my area and called rowing 'obscure' it would be something like me going to your area and saying that baseball is obscure. Because baseball is obscure here. Same for volleyball and basketball. It's kind of the point of the Olympics that different nations have different cultures with different strengths, like Jamaica in the sprinting, Fiji in the rugby or Ethiopia/Kenya in long distance running. It's neither fair nor accurate to say that we targeted sports without proper competition, nor that the achievement is 'not surprising' when it is the first time a host country has gone on to improve their medal count.
One of the funniest things I've ever seen was the EU acting like it had topped the medal tables by adding up the totals of all member states. I'd love to see what the US would achieve if it was able to field 20x more athletes.
No doubt it's about money - but which sports, exactly, are obscure? Equine events are probably the least affected by government funding, because they're practiced by hugely wealthy private individuals, and that has always been the case. If you came to my area and called rowing 'obscure' it would be something like me going to your area and saying that baseball is obscure. Because baseball is obscure here. Same for volleyball and basketball. It's kind of the point of the Olympics that different nations have different cultures with different strengths, like Jamaica in the sprinting, Fiji in the rugby or Ethiopia/Kenya in long distance running. It's neither fair nor accurate to say that we targeted sports without proper competition, nor that the achievement is 'not surprising' when it is the first time a host country has gone on to improve their medal count.
yeah EU and US is a bit of a silly comparison but it was more to get my point across.
Here's the article I was referring to:
www.economist.com
