I couldn't care less.

America always does

read some of these Canadian responses.. you should see a clearer picture now

exactly :winkwink:

I can only imagine the outcry from Americans if team USA were continually showing poor results at the Olympics.

There would be a shitstorm of hell to pay.

Sports and Olympic competitions are:

-politics/fighting without actual war/bloodshed
-escapism (just like video games, hobbies, etc.)
-observing the potential of the human body when pushed to the limits; it's grace, power, accuracy

The olympics showcases this stuff on the world stage.

America tends to perform magnificiently because we are excited about competition, we fund/reward winners very well, and we have a diverse pool to draw athletes from. Diversity can be and often is a mixed blessing, but as far as the olympics is concerned its benefits are readily apparent.

Nah, they'd all just hum drum over it, how the Olympics aren't important and they can't be bothered and begin to showcase all the ways they come to nation's help when they need it or how much charity they give or who they've invaded lately....

That's pretty much what I was gonna say. Those cute "summer" (summer? what's that?) olympics are nice and all and sure we'll send a few people over, but how does that even compare to what we care about -- ice hockey?

A little disappointed but I didn't have high hopes to begin with.It doesn't matter either way to me what they achieve

quite frankly i'm more proud of the guy who goes to china, get shammered in the village and wakes up in some swedish volleyball player's bed...

Is that like 30th best in the world?

Don't worry, the lack of snow and ice has probably had a negative effect on the results.

30th best - very doubtful.

Probably somewhere around 60-100 range I'd say.

I would've qualified except for fuckin' up the ligaments and cartiledge in the ankle. Twice :(

Hey if we play Hockey.. i'm sure we'll get something there... if we get nothing then you can say its a tragedy.

its the uniforms ...

its all about population, if 1/1000 people are awesome atheletes , china will naturally have more awesome atheletes.

From a "population-adjusted" medals table done after the 2004 Olympics, it turns out that of the 75 nations whose athletes made a podium in Athens, China was No. 68 on the efficiency list.

Canada beat both china and the usa in terms of medals per person

Latest Fails:

Swimming 4x200 relay team: Fail
Men's synchronized diving: Fail

hell im not even from canada and I'm ashamed for them.

I am ashamed that our system does nothing to support amateur athletes, and does everything to please the mullet wearing morons!

I am ashamed that 'ockey is all that the others Canadians think of.

I am ashamed that people do nothing to support athletes yet expect them (athletes) to produce result which will please them.

I am ashamed that Australia adopted a system which we (Canada) devised/created and abandoned. I am even more ashamed knowing the model is working for them!

P.S. Synchronized diving maybe an art, but it ain't a sport!

Interesting tidbit of info I heard while watching the female gymnastics last night.

In China they hand pick athletes when they are very young and basically tell them the path that they are going to follow, I don't think there is a whole lot of choice involved which kind of cheapens their success.

Either way Canada still has nothing.

totally shocked indeed!

As did the US :warning

What I find interesting is that even without the deep grassroots support for most of these sports in Canada our athletes often still manage to finish in 4th, 5th, 6th place in the world. One can only imagine how we'd do with better funding.

To me it's more about creating a culture of excellence. Our Olympic team has a "purple ribbon" attitude, that just participating is worth something. The lack of funding is obvious, but as stated earlier I think it's all about political will and leadership - if those two things are in place, funding will follow naturally. Just throwing money at the problem will not accomplish anything.

We currently have two olympic programs

- The road to excellence (summer olympics)
- Own the podium (focused on 2010)

Road to excellence is a spectacular failure - it's just lip service - since results matter, and there are no excellent results.

when is the winter olympics again?

I don't see why it matters. Look at the olympic sports, there is a reason countries such as Canada don't do well in them. None of these sports draw national interest with the exception of these 2 weeks every four year. Few kids grow up wanting to be an olympic skeet shooter or fencer. Your best athletes play hockey, lacrosse, and sometimes basketball or baseball.

Same goes for the U.S. in some areas. Sure the U.S. gets a lot of medals, but it's no sign of our national athletic ability. A very small percent of our population takes up swimming. Even less take up some of the other sports popular in the olympics. If olympic sports were treated as predominately as the NBA or NFL, we'd have triple the medals every olympics.

And I don't see why your country should change. Why force certain sports on your culture just for some nationalistic pride that will be forgotten in 48 hours? No one here can tell you how many golds the U.S won 8 years ago. Certain countries like China need the nationalistic crap to get by. It's why they pluck these kids out of schools at a few years old and train them night and day. Even then they can't compete in a lot of areas.

Lets be honest, if the U.S or Canada put more emphasis on these sports, had a public that actually cared about them, we'd have a lot more medals. For China this is their Super Bowl, for us, it's just a couple weeks of sports to tide us over before the NFL season starts.

Its sport, honestly. I like to watch it from time to time, but at the end of the day it means absolutely jack shit. Does anyone really achieve anything by swimming a little faster than anyone has ever before them? The reality is no. Spin it however you want, it's actually a worthless pursuit. Canada is a great country in many other respects, so I wouldn't really give a shit if I were you.

This may have been pointed out already, but I'm not scanning the entire thread:

Our government decided to cut funding to Summer Olympic athletes and focus on Vancouver 2010 with the "Own the Podium" program. The thinking is, right or wrong, that we are a far more competitive winter sport country and the money should go there.

Personally, I think it's an idiotic decision as there is far more attention here and abroad on what happens in the summer games. When we've had big wins in the past it's been a huge story (Ben Johnson, before the drug tests, Donovan Bailey, etc.) and clearly the public would like to see us do better.

On a side note, I'll be attending the Vancouver Olympics barring some unforeseen circumstance. Tickets go on sale in October.

Agreed, and I have not doubt that that is again going to be looked at intensively between now and 2012, as it should be.

to be fair, judgment should be based solely on medals/populations.

So, as an example, let us use the good ole US of eh:
the US has nine times the population of Canada.
By closing ceremonies, USA MUST have more than 9X (9.018..) the totals medals of Canada!

Any less than 9X and they are the same kinda losers as Canada.

Same goes for the rest.

Right now Tajikistan has INFINITELY more medals than Canada. The US won't have any problem winning more than 9x the medals as Canada. Josh Phelps might win 9x more medals than Canada by himself :2 cents:

Read about how the American Olympic athletes get funding
That wouldn't be very hard for Canada to do too.

The Olympics started?

A). Again, in the interest of fairness...
Just because some find it comforting to compare themselves to those with less does not mean it is fair.
Again, in all fairness, I believe Canada should have more medals than countries with a smaller population.

B). Who?


It's actually a very simple concept. Hell. If all the football/soccer ""experts"" can understand it..

I am willing to bet there is a much stronger correlation between winning and money spent then winning and population.

Why isn't India winning all sorts of medals?

That's pretty interesting... I've always wondered.

That is true.

Even though the American athletes probably receive more money, The United States is one of only three countries where Olympic athletes receive no government funding.
http://www.voanews.com/english/archi...TOKEN=82889413

But also,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports...,1220316.story

All you have to do is look at Australia for the correlation between population and # of medals to break down. Australia has 2/3 the population of Canada. The difference? Sports culture. :2 cents:

Fail update:

Fencing: http://www.tsn.ca/olympics/story/?id=246170

5th ranked fencer in the world (also emotional train wreck) loses in epic choke fashion.

Also, above where I said Josh Phelps.. obviously I was referring to Michael Phelps (we used to have an outfielder on the Jays named josh phelps).

i am really sad at our performance so far

but track and field is still to come

This is all well and good but fails to recognize the funding these kids get from the US schooling system.