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.