As the curtain closes on the Olympics at Beijing, various aritcles have started analyzing the performance of different teams. I came across a very interesting article on msn. It is titled National wealth worth weight in gold (medals) and analyzes the business of the Olympics. The article is neatly summarized in the first line : The winning formula is just so simple: Gold equals gold (few exceptions). The article makes a comparison between the GDP of a country and the number of medals won. A University of South Australia analysis found that one gold medal typically costs a country $37 million in training funds. The countries that won the most number of medals are those with a very fat economy (China, US, Russia, Japan, Great Britain). It’s not known how much money China has plowed into its Olympic program, but it’s thought to be far more than the United States.
Here is the table.
And now for the exceptions.
- India, which ranks 4th in GDP, could win only 3 medals. It is ranked 51 in the medal table.
- Small countries like Jamaica and Belarus - The GDP of Jamaica is $12 Billion compared to India's $4.2 trillion. Jamaica won 10 medals including 6 Gold medals!! Even a country named Belarus (do you even know where it is?) won 16 medals including 4 gold medals!!
There has been a really big discussion on this on some Indian groups in my office. They tried to find out why India sucks big time at sports. Do we even play any sport other than cricket? It's not that we are world champions even in cricket. We still get beaten by even Sri Lanka. I'm sure that this question does not have a simple answer. We have a very convoluted and shitty system in India and it is going to be very difficult to change that. We try to compete with China in everything. But this is one field where we cannot even compare the two countries.
Jai Hind!!
4 comments:
lol..!! thr's a helluva corruption in this field which itself explains y India is down thr..!! but i guess the attention is drawn towards it..!! when it comes to China, more than the players its the government officials, who r behind the players for giving good competition, not removing the credit from the players, but the pressure plays a major role here, one cud feel tht from the way Liu had to come out of competition..!!
corruption is the main factor and not just corruption.. we also have to be blamed.. Still our parents are not matured enough accept sport as a career.. We still have long way to go.. They was some discussion about this on Headlines today and some old government sport guy came and he was telling there are around 4 million table tennis contenders in china while india has very few thousand players.. and not to mention the lack of proper playground and infrastructure.. cricket just needs a stick and a ball unlike table tennis or other games.. First the craze on cricket should go for other sports to shine.. We are already laggin behind everything in China.. I fear chinese may take my job in the near future :(
Please stop comparing china and india.. please compare india with Kenya Iraq or pakistan..
"cricket just needs a stick and a ball unlike table tennis or other games.."
What the hell? I thought cricket needed a very good infrastructure.. The stadium!! Table tennis needs one table and two bats... (Pardon my ignorance.. I don't even know what it's called in Table Tennis. I'm a true Indian and all I care about is cricket :) )
The situation is something like this:
The athletes in India have to work to earn a living. just before the olympics they start practising.. But thats not the case with some other countries that were on the top in the latest olympics. Take Phelps for example. He just trained and trained for the last 4 years. He just took two days off the practise in the last 4 years. He is not bothered to earn a living because of the funds they allocate to athletes there. If this is done in India also then the situation might improve. Let's not blame the athletes, the govt has to take the responsibility for the failure. Jai Hind!! ;-)
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