Let’s be frank: Canada sucks at the summer games. We’re a snow-covered nation, for pity’s sake, so it’s no surprise that we’re pretty poor when it comes to swimming, cycling and archery.
As four years pass, I forget this phenomenon, and watch each new Olympics with renewed hope for my countrymen and women. Of course, just getting to the Olympics (especially with tighter requirements) is a tremendously admirable achievement. And I know that many athletes have legitimate personal goals which don’t involve the medal podium. Still, having been raised on sports where winning is everything, it’s hard not to be disappointed by a nation of 30 million people that can’t produce 20 medals.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Does Canada really lose? Check out http://espn.go.com/oly/summer00/standings/medalstan.html. Canada won 14 medals in 2000. The US won 97 medals. The US population is 10 times that of Canada. So Canada should have won 10 medals or the US should have won 140!
Also, if you look at the populations of Russia and China, their athletes really could be winning more medals, relative to the US.
Australia, Germany, France, and Italy deliver spectacular performances, especially given their population counts. (Australia is amazing.)
When you go further down the list, other countries seem to win medals in proportion with their populations. In my opinion, there are four countries with phenomenal athletic performances (Australia, Germany, France, Italy) and the others deliver performances consistent with their population. A few current/former Communist countries also do very well, but their athletic programs have really been state-funded professional programs. So does Canada really do that poorly for a frozen nation?
I did a quick run-through of the top Western nations. Comparing to Communist (or formerly Communist) doesn’t seem relevant, though Cuba and Russia do very well. MPM stands for medals per million.
Country MPM
Australia 2.95
Norway 2.2
Netherlands 1.56
Sweden 1.35
Greece 1.3
Germany 0.7
France 0.63
Italy 0.6
Britain 0.47
Canada 0.45
USA 0.33
Spain 0.3
Notably, two other frozen nations–Sweden and Norway do very well. As does (though it’s not on the list) Finland. Clearly, European nations are more interested in Olympic sports than us Canadians, but our results are still pretty meagre.
Agreed. I love the Winter Olympics because it’s “our time”. We don’t ever “win” the Olympics, but we do very, very well in our chosen sports.
I mean, c’mon, there have been very few “definining” I AM CANADIAN moments like the last gold medal match for hockey!!!
I was watching Mark Tewksbery talking to Brian Williams last night and Mark was pointing out the fact that the Canadian Swim Team is doing very poorly at the games. Out of all the races they have been in so far, not one single swimmer has had a PB. They are 0 for 19 in the PB column. Not that they need/should win any medals, but you’d think they’d be swimming their hearts out for their own personal bests. That’s what seems dissapointing in my opinion.
the peanut butter column?
PB = Personal Best
Wouldn’t a better measure of success be to compare metals won by a country compared with the number of athletes that are competing from that country? That would at least show that a country is taking the Olympics seriously rather than just going for sheer numbers. Quality over quantity
Jeff: I don’t know if that’s a better metric. I mean, which nation is better, the Canada that sends 200 athletes and wins 10 medals, or the Canada that sends 400 athletes and wins 15?
Admittedly, my data set is way too small, and should probably incorporate medals over, say, the last 10 games, as well as, say, percentage of GDP spent on amateur athletics and a lot of other demographic data.
I think Mark Tewksbury was definitely hitting on something when he made comments about the Canadian amateur sports system. We need better coaches, and we need our athletes to become tougher – which in part means better funding so that our athletes can get to more competitions and focus more on their sport than their waitressing job.
That said, the thing I like about CBC coverage of the Olympics is that it doesn’t focus so much on whether Canadians are winning medals… I like that they cover events where Canadians barely make a dent. It’s the glory of amateur sport that draws me to watching the Games. Seeing a Canadian on the podium is just the icing on the cake.
The thing I *don’t* like about CBC coverage of the games is how they’ve managed to completely leave out the entire equestrian eventing sport. The eventing athletes aren’t even listed on their website as part of the team, although Ian Millar is listed for showjumping. They cancelled their broadcast of the cross-country event, which is freakishly gruesome but also exciting. I’m pissed off, frankly.
Darren — thanks for posting medals per million calculations.
I found this analysis of the cost per medal and the per capita cost for each medal at the Sydney Olympics. The article only looks at three countries (including Canada), but we seem to “buy” medals for less than Britain or Australia.
Andrea
One thing to note is that North Americans are generally more interested in team sports than individual sports.
i.e. Australia is great at swimming and gets say 20 medals per Olympics in it, the Norwegians are great at Cross Country Skiing and get say 15 medals per Olympics in it and Canada is great at hockey and gets, at best, 2 medals per Olympics in it.
European countries also benefit becuase the choice of sports (IMO) is very Euro-centric with luge, nordic combined, endless varieties of cross country skiing, european handball, a wide assortment of cycling races and so on all longtime Olympic sports while something like baseball is only a very recent addition.
Which is not to say that some countries aren’t just more athletic than others. Height is a big advantage in most sports and I suspect that there’s a definite correlation between places with a tall population (Australia, Holland, Scandinavia) and good Olympic performances.
And then there’s Montreal morons who like to distract atheletes at diving events. As if our losing streak wasn’t enough.
http://www.immutablyme.com/archives/000423.html
Australia? Places with a tall population? Are you kidding? We’re not taller than all other countries on average. I’m an Australian with a multi-olympic gold medalist relative (S.O’Neill). I’ve also lived on four continents – Oz, UE, asia,and now US. Australia does well due to it’s love of and involvement in sport – of all kinds, it’s long sporting traditions, it’s climate, and it’s social values. Australia has one of the lowest professional sport spectator turnout statistics on the planet but one of the highest participation rates. It’s population lives on average longer than every other country except one, and it’s corporate dishonesty is third lowest, and cynicysm is professional sports is low. It was the first country on the planet to give women the right to vote… and the first to provide equal pay as well. That’s the national psychology that’s consistent with the 5 former olympian women medal winners on the final leg to light the flame in 2000 at the stadium.
Australia is one of only three countries to be at every olympics, and the only country in the southern hemisphere to host the games (twice). Appropriately, it is also the only country on the planet that has it’s own olympic ring (the green one)
When the 2000 Olympics were over, the airlines had a hell of a time convincing many of the 12,000 odd athletes to leave the country on the planned flights they had – not because they liked Australia (which many did) but because they were shown enormous personal regard by the local population just for being active sportspeople.
There is simply no other country on the planet that participates in sport to that extent. You know what the biggest sport played in oz is? Netball. YUP. That’s right, and Soccer’s about third. YUP – The game not really played porfessionally in Australia. My point? Participation.
Peite: Participation doesn’t drive success, development does. More people play soccer than any other sport in Canada, but our soccer team is still ranked something like 95th in the world.
Here’s a thought:
I wonder if part of the problem is a more widespread societal issue not confined to sport?
The “Politically Correct” themes that underlie so much of our educational system and sense of public conduct may have literally bred out of young Canadians the competitive instincts needed to succeed at this level.
When the received wisdom is “everybody wins” just for showing up, then in truth nobody wins.
I recall this philosophy being prevalent in the elementary school I attended outside of Vancouver (not too long ago).
On “sports day” they made sure to hand out blue ribbons to every kid who ran in the foot race, from first to last.
Extrapolate this kind of practice out over a couple of decades and several million kids and maybe our pathetic performance in the pool is no surprise.
Given the genetic, cultural and geographic and economic similarities we share with the Australians, shouldn’t we at least be more like them than not in this respect?
Also, if you look at the populations of Russia and China, their athletes really could be winning more medals, relative to the US.
Um China yes, but not Russia. Russia’s population is much smaller than the US. As for China there is one thing they clearly lack though, diversity and a strong overall country. I mean they’re nearly the size of the US, and yet most of China is underdeveloped.