Doping in Beijing

Yesterday the IOC announced that the some 5,000 blood samples from the Beijing Olympics will be retested. The Olympic officials want to check that they do not contain CERA, the third generation EPO, which was responsible for Riccardo Riccò’s disqualification from the last Tour de France, and for that of Leonardo Piepoli, just a few days ago. Following the recent scandal one of the IOC vice-presidents, Thomas Bach, declared that the future of road cycling at the Olympics is uncertain, unless the international cycling federetion does not take immediate measures against doping.

Some days earlier, on October 2, the Ioc had disqualified the Brazilian horseman Rodrigo Pessoa, who concluded the jumping event at the 5^th place, for testing his horse Rufus positive to a doping substance. Ironically, Pessoa had won the gold medal in the same event in Athens after the disqualification of Cian O’Connor from Ireland. Equestrian sports seem to emerge as a new doping central: apart from Pessoa, five more horsemen were disqualified in Beijing for administrating doping substances to their horses. Pessoa is the twelfth athlete overall disqualified for doping charges (but we are still far from Athen’s record, were they were 27). Three more cases are still pending: two hammer throwers from Belarus, who won the silver and bronze medal and a Polish canoeist were also caught during anti-doping controls, but more tests are necessary before a definitive decision.

The Beijing Games: an assessment - 3

In connection with what I said in my last post, this blog (I will talk again about this site) reminds that the Mauritius are the smallest country which won a medal in Beijing, but not the smallest country ever to win an Olympic medal. Liechtenstein, with only 35.000 inhabitants, won nine medals (two of which gold), all at the Winter Games. The smallest nation ever to win a medal at the Summer Games are the Bermuda (65.000 inhabitants), which won a bronze in boxing (like the Mauritius) in 1976. In another post, the same blog at the beginning of the Olympics listed the largest countries which never won a medal. Among the first 10, two finally won one in Beijing, Afghanistan and Sudan. The largest nation without any medal is still Bangladesh (158 million inhabitants). The same post proposes another count, listing the countries which had more participants in the Olympics, failing to win a single medal. The worst country in this classification is Guatemala, which had 200 athletes at the Olympics overall. In Beijing, the largest team with no medals was Hong Kong (34 athletes), while the smallest teams winning a medal were Panama and Togo (3 athletes each).
The count of medals by population is a classic of the ‘alternative’ medal tallies which are proposed at each edition of the Games. Some people cannot satisfy with the mere total of golden or overall medals, and like proposing more ‘rational’ medal tallies. In general, this is a way to show that the nation which actually won is in fact not so good, when we consider the ‘true’ values. The problem is that these classifications may vary greatly if we change the parameters, and it is quite easy to let our preferred nation win (or – more often – let a nation we don’t like lose). To obtain a good score in the medals by population classification, China, hosting one fifth of the world’s population should have won a fifth of the 958 medals which were given, i.e. 191, twice the medals it actually won.
This post is devoted to some of the ‘alternative’ medal tallies which have been proposed for the last Olympics. In all cases, I will list all five nations, as well as the position of China and of the US. Just to remember it, the ‘classical’ medal tally was the following:

o a b
1. China 51 21 28
2. US 36 38 36
3. Russia 23 21 28
4. UK 19 13 15
5. Germany 16 10 15

This site proposes various classifications, considering both population and GDP. The classification of medals by population is as follows:

1. Bahamas
2. Jamaica
3. Iceland
4. Slovenia
5. Australia
…
83. Indonesia
84. South Africa
85. Egypt
86. Vietnam
87. India

165,000 Bahamians are enough to win a medal, while you need 378 million Indians to win one. In this classification the US are in the 44th position, and China in the 68th.
Unsurprisingly, such countries as Zimbabwe or North Korea lead the medals by GDP classification:

1. Zimbabwe
2. North Korea
3. Jamaica
4. Mongolia
5. Armenia
…
83. Belgium
84. Venezuela
85. South Africa
86. Mexico
87. India

Of course, in this case the US are in the bottom part of the classification (75th place), while China is in the 44th place.
The Blogosfere site, on the other hand, recalls the classification made by SportWeek (the weekly magazine by la Gazzetta dello Sport), which considers, together with medals, the first 8 athletes for each event (i.e. all finalists). The main interest of this classification is that it is lead by the US, with almost 100 points more than China:

1. US 1054
2. China 956
3. Russia 794
4. Australia 507
5. UK 499

Finally, it is possible to think of another classification, inspired by the one cited above. While for Panama and Togo 3 athletes were enough to win a medal, 136 were needed to South Africa. This classification too, however, may be discussed: is it fair to compare the results of Panama and Togo, whose medals were won thanks to personal performances (Saladino for Panama and canoeist Boukpeti for Togo) with those of Ethiopia which won 7 medals (four of them gold) with only 22 athletes (all in long-distance running events)? In this case too, I give the first and the last five countries:

1. Panama 3
Togo 3
3. Ethiopia 3,1
4. Zimbabwe 3,25
5. Afghanistan 4
Kenya 4
…
83. Greece 39,7
84. Belgium 48
85. Egypt 103
86. Venezuela 109
87. South Africa 136

In this classification the US are in the 10th place (5,4 athletes per medal), while China is in the 14th place (6,4 athletes per medal).

The Beijing Games: an assessment - 2

In the last post I made some commentaries about the medal count and in particular about China’s 51 gold medals. However, an analysis of the lower part of the medal tally is also interesting. In Beijing a record number of 87 countries won at least a medal. At Sydney 2000 they were 80 and at Athens 2004 they were “only” 74. Moreover, in Beijing, six nations won a medal for the first time (they were only three in Athens). Many commentaries were made about Afghanistan’s first Olympic medal (it got a bronze in taekwondo). Funnily, Sudan, whose relationships with China created much debate before the Olympics, won its first medal ever (a silver in the men’s 800 meters). The other new medal winners are Bahrain, the Mauritius, Tajikistan and Togo. Moreover, Serbia participated for the first time with such name since 1912 and won one silver and two bronze medals. One could think that the number of medal winning countries simply increases because the number of the nations which participate in the Olympics. In fact, the rate of medal winning nations on the total of participants also increased in Beijing. This is the increasing of this rate in the last five editions of the Olympic Games:

Barcelona 1992 – 37,8%

Atlanta 1996 – 40,1%

Sydney 2000 – 40,2

Athens 2004 – 36,6%

Beijing 2008 – 42,6%

Which are the reasons of the almost constant increasing in the number of nations which win medals at the Olympics? The main reason is certainly a great dispersion in the distribution of the available medals. In Beijing China and the US won more than a third (36%) of the gold medals available, and more than a fifth (22%) of the total medals. The remaining medals was distributed, as we saw, among a record number of nations. The nations which won less than four medals are 39, almost a half of the medal winning nations. One other reason is certainly the globalization of athletes. Thus, a Frenchman could win a medal for Togo and a Moroccan one for Bahrain. However, another important reason is in my opinion the extension of the Olympic program. If we analyze the distribution of medals in different sports, the one in which the greatest number of nations won medals is of course athletics (42 nations). However, it was also the sport with the greatest number of medals avalaible (141). This gives a ratio of 3,3 medals / nation. Therefore, athletics is in fact one of the least “democratic” sports in the Olympic program (only swimming, with a ratio of 4,9 medals / nation is less democratic). From this point of view, the most democratic sports (if we exclude team sports) are taekwondo (1,4 medals / nation), weightlifting and tennis (1,5 medals / nation), which are also three of the most recently added sports. Taekwondo as well as women’s weightlifting were admitted in the Olympic program in 2000, whereas tennis was reintroduced in 1988, after a 60 years break.

The Beijing Games: an assessment - 1

After the end of the Beijing Games, it is time to analyze them in depth. In this first post I want to propose some considerations about the medal count. First of all, there was a slight raising of Russia, after a bad start, which got 23 golds and 72 medals globally. It is, in any case, its worst result since it stopped participating in the Games as the Soviet Union (or the CIS). On the other hand, China confirmed its power, reaching 100 medals. As many had predicted, China definitely won in the number of golden medals, but was behind the United States in the number of total medals. This clearly indicates that the Chinese mainly aimed at being first in the medal count. To have an idea of the importance of China’s result, we can have a look at the best results obtained in a single Olympic Games. Here I list the five best results in terms of gold medals in all the Olympics since 1948 (the only ones which can be compared with the present ones):

USA (1984) – 83 gold
USSR (1980) – 80 gold
China (2008) – 51 gold
USSR (1972) – 50 gold
USSR (1976) – 49 gold

As one can see, with the exception of the two editions which underwent boycotts (1980 and 1984), China obtained the top score in terms of gold medals obtained in a single edition of the Olympics, and can be compared with the results of Soviet Union in its best years. It is true that today there are many more medals available than in the Seventies. However, China’s result is the best one also in the ratio of gold medals on the total:

USA (1984) – 83 gold / 174 medals (47,7%)
USSR (1980) – 80 gold / 195 medals (41%)
China (2008) – 51 gold / 100 medals (51%)
USSR (1972) – 50 gold / 99 medals (50,5%)
USSR (1976) – 49 gold / 125 medals (39,2%)

On this point of view, the medal count of the second (the United States) and of the third (Russia) is much more balanced. If China’s gold was to triumph in the largest number of events, it was perfectly reached. Chinese athletes were probably not interested in getting a silver or a bronze. An article by Paolo Garimberti (Le Olimpiadi che non hanno cambiato la Cina, The Olympics which did not change China) on the Italian magazine Venerdì di Repubblica tries to reduce the importance of China’s success:

in sports China is still a country of ping pong players and of laboratory-made acrobats: their medal count is richer than that of the United States, but with no medals in the sports preferred by Chinese social climbers (from basketball to football), and without which the neo superpower still feels "the sick man of Asia", a country lacking attractiveness and respect.

This analysis does not take into account the effectiveness with which China planned its success since its return on the Olympic stage. One of the ways of doing that was to occupy the space unoccupied by other sport superpowers, or partially freed after the dissolution of the socialist block. This explains China’s unsatisfactory results in athletics and its slow progression (with the exclusion of the doping era) in swimming. On the contrary, apart from the national sport of table tennis, China obtained most of its successes in shooting, weightlifting, diving, gymnastics, i.e. in sports in which the other Olympic superpowers (the US in particular) were weaker. I will write again on this matter in another post. Moreover, as the above list shows, China concentrated on paying sports, that is sports in which one or few athletes can win many medals. This is at the opposite of basketball and football, in which you need a full team, including reserves, to obtain a medal which always counts as one in the medal tally. Of course, not to speak of those pseudo-sociological analyses according to which the Chinese would be, by their culture, more disposed to individual sports. Actually, there are many individual sports in which they are weak and, on the other hand, they obtained important successes in some team sports, such as women volleyball and football.

Bush and Sarkozy in Beijing

In the last days, the Chinese got two important confirmation. Both the American President G.W. Bush and French President Sarkozy announced they will participate in the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Bush’s announcement wasn’t really a surprise, even if several US politicians (including Barack Obama) urged him to boycott the Games. Yesterday’s edition of Le Monde announced that Sarkozy will take part in the opening too. It is an important announcement, since France is the current president of the EU. Sarkozy’s condition for his participation was that the Beijing officials accepted to meet with the Dalai Lama’s representatives. Sarkozy himself declared he would meet with the Dalai Lama, who will be in France just during the Olympics, even the meeting will probably not take place on that occasion. The Chinese are not happy with Sarko’s trip to Beijing for the Olympics. Several Chinese sites cited negative statements from commentators or bloggers, like this one, which quotes a Chinese researcher pointing out Sarkozy’s “immaturity and carelessness” in posing a condition for his presence at the Olympics. According to the same site, 89% of the Chinese are opposed to Sarkozy’s participation in the opening ceremony.

The medals war - 2

Discussions about China’s chances to become the first Olympic power and to overcome the US at the next Olympics in Beijing started at the end of the former edition in Athens, 2004. In Athens China reached its top result, both for gold medals (it was second with 32 golds) and for total medals (third with 63). China’s first Olympic appearance was at Los Angeles 1984, and in twenty years it doubled the number of won medals (recall that in Los Angeles the USSR and all the East-European countries did not compete). At the end of the Athens Olympics many observers predicted that in Beijing China will finally outdo the US in the medal struggle. Nevertheless, China’s sport officials maintained a low profile and claimed that the country did not reach yet the top of its potential. In Athens the chief de mission of the Chinese delegation Yuan Weimin had declared “Though China is in second place in the gold medal standings, we are not a sports superpower […] There is still a considerable gap between us and the United States and Russia […] We are still comparatively weak in track and field and swimming, two premier sports at the Olympic Games”. Last year I quoted the result of a research by the British Olympic Committee according to which, if the Games had taken place in 2006, China would have been ahead of the US in the gold medal count. Now the society PriceWaterhouseCoopers published a study according to which China could win 88 medals, the US 87 and Russia 79. The results for the five top nations would be the following (the study only considers the number of total medals):

	Beijing 2008	Athens 2004	difference
1. China	88	63	+25
2. US	87	103	-16
3. Russia	79	92	-13
4. Germany	43	48	-5

The diagram illustrates the total number of medals won by the first four Olympic powers from 1984 (the year of China’s Olympic debut) to 2008, if the predictions of the study are correct, and shows in particular China’s amazing progression.

Flame heroes

The first heroin of the Beijing Olympics, at least for the Chinese, is without any doubt Jin Jing, a paralympic fencer. An exalted protester tried to grab the torch from her hands on Monday in Paris. Even if one is sympathetic with the Tibetan struggle, it should be acknowledged that it was not a particularly elegant gesture. Just because she held the torch, Jin Jing became a symbol of China’s resistance, at a moment in which it is attacked by the rest of the World. The People’s Daily published a full article on her arrival in China after her misadventure in Paris. Chinese victories at the Olympics were always considered a victory of all China. Similarly, the Olympic flame becomes today the symbol of China’s honor, a country defending the values of olympism. The article from the People’s Daily speaks of “incredible courage”, but in her declarations she is humble. In this too she is similar to Chinese Olympic winners: she only did what any good Chinese would have done, her gesture was all China’s gesture.

If we analyze in depth China’s sport history, we realize that the Beijing Olympics are the achievement of a century of Chinese efforts to escape the semi-colonial status in which they were at the beginning of the 20^th century and to become a World super-power. Sports were an important platform for these efforts. At the beginning of last century, Chinese officials believed that by making the people stronger sport would have allowed China to counter regular attacks from foreign powers and to emerge as a great nation. At that time, the Chinese loved to repeat that abroad China was referred to as “the sick man of East Asia”. For many Chinese the tiny one-legged fencer must have appeared as a perfect symbol of that sick man of East Asia who finally is able to fight bravely to defend its values. This blog is right in pointing out that this episode in particular is harmful for Tibet supporters, and that Beijing officials couldn’t have thought of a better pro-Chinese advertising:

This public relations show was not even scripted by the Chinese Communists, who are unlikely to ever accomplish this level of success no matter how hard they try. Faced with the beautiful heroine with one leg, how is any liberal dissidence on behalf of Tibet independence going to work inside Chinese? This was a bonanza handed to the Chinese Communists by the pro-Tibet protestors.

Finally, Tibetan supporters too have their heroes. Many refused to carry the torch (for example, Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathay). Those two American torchbearers did carry the flame and took the moment to contest China and support Tibet. During the San Francisco relay Andrew Michael (another wheelchair torchbearer) showed a small card with the Tibetan flag on the back of his hand, and Majora Carter took a Tibetan flag out of her sleeve after passing the flame to the following torchbearer.