Post Games Analysis | How do you analyse your country's performance at Tokyo 2020?

[orangeman 1,991]

On 8/13/2021 at 4:35 PM, De_Gambassi said:

I think most countries believe their athletes lack this 'killer instinct' to reach golds/medals. We all tend to overplay the potential of our own, and when they fail to reach this slightly illusional potential, we go for the easy answer : they lack some kind of mental strength. When really, it's more complex than that.

I don't know what other countries think, but like I said the statistics have shown that for many SOG and even WOGs, Canada has the most 4th place finishes in relation to top-3s than any other nation.  In addition, for many Olympic cycles Canada had the worst World Championship to Olympic medal conversion rates.  It's not just a feeling, it's an empirical truth about Canadian athletes.  

 

This has been changing recently, with an athletes like Kylie Masse, Maggie MacNeil and Damien Warner who can perform consistently on big stages (when not injured).  And then you have Penny Oleksiak and Andre De Grasse who show up especially for the big moments.  

 

None of this is meant as a condemnation of any particular Canadian athlete, or Canadian athletes in general.  I guess you just have to be Canadian to understand the angst.  Outside of hockey and curling (which both managed to disappoint us in 2018, and I was there in person to witness it!) we just expect to lose even if our person/team is ranked high.  I guess that makes winning even sweeter, though.  

 

Canada finished 11th on the medal table.  I'd guarantee every country in the top-10 looked at a sport, or several individual athletes, and said, "Yup, that's OUR sport/event!"  Canada doesn't have that, at least not in the SOG.  The closest we got this time, the first time probably in our history, is "We should at least get a few medals in swimming and athletics.  Even if some fail, others should get something, right???!!!"  Most Canadians predicted 15-20 medals with 1-3 golds, with nothing specific.  It's just that we should get more but with a failing rate of 50%, that's how it should work out.  Turns out we broke our records, but realistically no huge surprises came through to account for our glaring disappointments so we probably should have got 30 with 10 golds.  But whatever, this is how it is and we're happy.  

[thiago_simoes 1,423]

1 - I was tempted to give it a 10, but since we could have walked away with 10+ gold medals easily but lost some important chances, ending up with 7 gold medals, I will give it a 9 out of 10. Still, the best Olympics ever for Brazil, no question about it. But it could have been even better.

 

2 - There has never been an official goal, but the unofficial goal was to reach 20 medals and we reached 21. So, I believe everything went well, maybe even better than expected.

 

3 - The biggest surprise has to be a bronze medal in tennis. It's not like we didn't expect a medal -- we did, but with Soares/Melo. Stefani/Pigosi winning a medal was not part of anyone's plans.

As far as disappointments go, volleyball/beach volleyball with only 1 silver medal has got to be the biggest villains. But maybe surfing and skateboarding could also be seen as disappointments. We expected 2 more medals in surfing and at least 1 gold medal in skateboarding. We could have earned 3 to 5 more medals in these sports, but our athletes fell short.

 

4 - Artistic gymnastics will be the sport that will receive the most funding, I'm sure. It has received lots and lots of money in the past, but now it will be even more. Our junior female gymnasts are not good, though, so we need all the money in the world to help them grow.