
A Visual History of Which Countries Have Dominated the Summer Olympics - prawn
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/08/sports/olympics/history-olympic-dominance-charts.html
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ekianjo
Typical example of poor graphics at work. You only have data once every 4
years yet they draw curves between each dot as if there was actual data in
between. This is extremely misleading.

Plus, I don't understand the necessity to put "Nazi Germany" after 1933. Based
on all facts it was still a single, unified country at the time, no matter who
was ruling it.

The "Other countries in Europe" represent a huge chunk of medals and should be
separated at least by major countries, leaving only smaller amounts
unseparated.

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Gravityloss
You can think it the other way around. There's going to be some continuity as
many athletes compete in many olympics during their career, even if it's
"sampled" every four years. Also most often some sports scenes and countries
experience cycles. I find it a lot easier to see those kind of things from
continuous curves. Even if it's not so exact.

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yiyus
The graphs are really bad. The problem I have is not the continuity, which as
you say can help to identify trends, but the huge gap between two real data
points. It should be clear what is real data and what is not (for example,
using a linespoints graph), it really looks like there were medals won in non-
onlympic years. The author focused too much on making beautiful graphs instead
of just presenting the data.

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stinos
And maybe it's just me but I think colored lines would be clearer than those
colored surfaces which seem to originate at 0 after the gapss.

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flexie
Medal count in absolute figures says little about which country does well in
producing athletes, and a lot about the size of the population. One would
think that the US, Russia or China are good at producing great athletes when
looking at these figures, but reality is that all three countries do a rather
mediocre job when taking into consideration the size of their populations.
This is a better measure: [http://www.medalspercapita.com/#weighted-per-
capita:2012](http://www.medalspercapita.com/#weighted-per-capita:2012)

It reveals that you are more likely to become an olympic medalist if you are
from the Caribbean, Scandinavia, certain Eastern European countries, Australia
and New Zealand, than if you are Chinese, American or Russian.

And please notice that the figures hold true for several Summer Olympics. The
US, China and Russia don't dominate at all.

Also the medal count per GDP is interesting.

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tgb
> It reveals that you are more likely to become an olympic medalist if you are
> from the Caribbean, Scandinavia, certain Eastern European countries,
> Australia and New Zealand, than if you are Chinese, American or Russian.

The Olympics is actually set up to favor smaller countries by nature of having
a cap on how many people from one country can compete in an event. There are
probably many athletes from US/China/Russia that would compete were they from
other countries.

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jazoom
They only send the best. The best tend to win the medals.

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lordnacho
Polo and Water Polo?

Isn't Polo the sport where you have horses running around on a huge field, and
Water Polo the one with humans swimming around a pool?

I don't think Polo is at the Olympics, but I might be wrong.

It mentions the plunge for distance. I'd love to see tug-of-war reinstated.

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oevi
It was from 1900 - 1936:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polo_at_the_Summer_Olympics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polo_at_the_Summer_Olympics)

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dccoolgai
Looked up a fun fact yesterday: Michael Phelps has won more medals than India
in the last 3 Olympics and is on pace to do it again. Being a fan of
underdogs, I started following and cheering the Indian team and it's been a
lot of fun.

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miguelrochefort
He's also won more gold medals than Canada in the past 3-4 summer olympics.

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serge2k
India does lousy at the olympics in general and Canada does lousy at the
summer olympics.

I can'tspeak for other canadians, but I don't give 2 shits about the summer
olympics.

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flukus
Doesn't India do lousy at every sport expect cricket and field hockey? I'm
always amazed at how china and india can't find 11 decent soccer players.

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satori99
Australia is by far the smallest country (23M) to make-the-grade in recent
times, and its almost entirely because of efforts in or on water.

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aaron695
...And it puts in a disportionately huge amount of money into it (citation
needed)

Rather than other countries that spend money on stuff like science and things.

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flukus
Funding elite sport is funding science to an extent.

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yiyus
That is quite a stretch.

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flukus
A stretch yes, but there is research going on at the AIS, try to eek out that
half a percent performance boost.

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kevindeasis
What makes third world countries poor performers at the olympics?

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timwaagh
there is also the factor of whether a sport is at the olympics. I believe
wrestling is a big sport in west africa. and polo-ish games are pretty big in
central asia. these don't appear at the olympics because the ioc is mostly
controlled by westerners.

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blackbagboys
Wrestling's removal as a 'core' Olympic sport was pushed by the Chinese, who
wanted to get wushu in.

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logfromblammo
And such meta-sport competition could be addressed easily and effectively by
bringing back _pankration_ under the aegis of IMMAF. Any martial art not
contested separately as a pure discipline could enter competitors in the mixed
discipline tournament.

Wrestling, boxing, taekwondo, and judo are all martial arts officially
contested during the 2016 international games. Additionally, Budo (Japanese)
was exhibited in 1964, Glima (Viking) in 1912, and Savate (French) in 1924.

Demonstration sports were suspended after 1992, so Wushu (Chinese) was not
exhibited _at_ the Beijing games. Instead, a Wushu tournament ran concurrently
with the international games, in Beijing, with permission from the
international committee. Looked like a duck; quacked like a duck.

Sports with a compliant international governing body now get to be in a
differently-branded international games every 4 years rather than a one-time
demonstration sport just when it is popular in the current host country.
Sports can be "promoted" from the "next year" games to the main event. Ju-
jutsu, Sumo, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, and Karate will be contested in 2017. I am
not familiar with any reason why the International Wushu body chooses not to
organize events at the other games.

But wrestling is not removed. Wrestling is _in_ for 2020, as is Karate--
receiving one of the aforementioned promotions.

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liviu-
Is there a name for this type of graph?

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jorgeyp
Yes, a streamgraph.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streamgraph](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streamgraph)

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deviate_X
lol the USA is #1 at Soccer

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junto
"Britain". You mean "Great Britain".

We might not be so great anymore, but it is the correct name.

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dan1234
Isn’t it also “Great Britain & Northern Ireland” as far as the Olympics goes?

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lucozade
I believe the Olympic team is called Great Britain and our Northern Irish
cousins can elect to represent either that team or the Ireland team.

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Lapsa
other countries in North America ^_^

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timwaagh
All those nyt articles are now behind a paywall for me. the web link does not
work anymore. is it policy to allow paywalled links?

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kitd
TIL there was a (kind of) Olympic Games in 1906.

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sandworm101
"Other countries in North America"

Really? There are only TWO countries in that category, a category that is
significantly larger than some of the other listed countries (Japan, Finland).
Even West and Nazi Germanys get mentions. See you all at the winters. It isn't
a Lincoln penny that they bury at center ice each year.

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mrweasel
Really... So where would you put Cuba, Mexico or Haiti? There's at least 20
North American countries. How many of those that are participating in the
Olympics is of cause a different story.

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pluma
As a non-American: honest question, is Nicaragua part of North or South
America? Where is the line generally drawn?

I was always under the impression that "North America" only encompasses the
big three but the Caribbeans and Central America (i.e. everything on the land
bridge below Mexico up to and including Nicaragua) are not considered part of
either of the two "Americas".

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mrweasel
I'm not American either, but I think regardless of nationality the geography
is pretty clearly defines.

The Wikipedia article seems to be consistent with what I learned in school,
and it puts Nicaragua in North America.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America)

I think the issue is that many have been taught to view America as three
parts: North, South and Central. Central America however isn't actually a
continent.

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logfromblammo
Central America is that part of North America on the continental land mass
between Colombia and Mexico. This is convenient for [U.S.] Americans that
don't care to learn the names or relative positions of those countries.

I consider the Lucayans, Greater Antilles, and Lesser Antilles to be North
American, down to Grenada. Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, and Curacao are South
American. Looking at a map that shows seafloor depth makes this distinction
easier, as the latter are clearly on South America's continental shelf. This
makes "the Caribbean" that part of North America on the island archipelago.
Again, this is convenient for [U.S.] Americans who don't know any of those
states and territories other than Puerto Rico--even the other U.S.
possessions.

Contrary to Wikipedia, "Middle America" is the Great Plains, Near South, and
Midwest regions of the U.S., specifically the white, Protestant Christian,
middle-class, suburban communities therein. "Mesoamerica" is the northern part
of Central America and the southern part of Mexico.

We don't talk about Bermuda or Greenland.

