shuttler
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2012
- Messages
- 9,253
- Reaction score
- 3
- Country
- Location
Congrats to PRC on maintaining the lead in Gold medals tally for so many days.
The Olympics or any such international events (like the Asian Games) should be restructured to include more sports and more equal number of medals from similar sports. I just browsed through the lists at London 2012 site. There seem to be about 70+ gold medals available from swimming and athletics. In football, a team of 11 people must defeat other teams numerous times, over many days they must maintain their success, only to win a single gold medal. In swimming or athletics, very often a single athelete gets to win multiple medals within a few days. Some thing is amiss.
On the same note, in weightlifting, I see that Iran and former Soviet Union countries are historically in a great position. However, the way that men's weightlifting weight categories are grouped allows for only 2 or 3 medal opportunities for these countries because all weightlifters above 105 kg are categorized into the 105+ kg bundle. They could have divided this segment further into another 3 or 4 categories, like 110 kg category, 120 kg category, 135 kg category, 160 kg category, and 180+ kg category, for example. I am quite certain, then, countries like Iran could have won multiple medals from this event alone.
Iran's multiple world record/olympic record holder Hossein Rezazadeh for those who did not know.
2004 OLYMPIC GAMES HOSSEIN REZAZADEH THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD (OLYMPIC SNATCH) - YouTube
His 'protege' Behdad Salimi also appears to have immense talent.
Behdad Salimi 214kg Snatch World Record - 2011 World Weightlifting Championship - YouTube
Looking at medals tally, we see that out of 18 gold medals by USA, 11 came from swimming alone. For Britain, they have recently won gold medals in sports like rowing or canoeing or some other sport that most of the world does not probably even know about. Cutting down on the number of gold medals available in these sports may be a good idea for fair distribution of medals.
Edited: In addition, China should rally other non Western and Asian countries towards this cause. Take a look at Usain Bolt's numerous outstanding World Records. Then, in the 3000 m and similar distance competitions, East Africans like Kenyans, Sudanese and Ethiopians seem to dominate. Increasing the medals tally in those competitions would be beneficial to the non Western countries like increasing the number of medals in the 105+ kg weightlifting competition will be for Iran and some neighbouring countries strong in this competition.
Cutting down on "Western specialty" sports' medal available will also help ensure that Westerners remain satisfied with fewer medals. No more 30+ golds in swimming, and no more 35+ golds in athletics.
Very good points mate! Some of these events are western centric. Take Equestrian (5 gold) WTF!!!, rowing (14) Sailing (10) Canoeing (Slalom 4 + Sprint 12 = 16), Fencing (10) for example.