Summer Olympic Games Paris 2024 Medal Predictions Road to Paris 2024

[copravolley 116]

8 minutes ago, dodge said:

Is someone genuinely asking why Eastern bloc countries fell off in terms of sporting results after the arrival of democracy? 
 

East Germany only competed in 5 Olympics in rowing, but they won 48 medals, including 33 gold. They were only overtaken by the US in 2016 in the all time medal list (and they’re still ahead of the rest)

 

In Athletics, there’s still several European records that exist since the 80s with East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and the USSR all involved. 
 

This isn’t a slight on the fine people from Eastern Europe on here and the current athletes doing their best.

 

But the answer to why they were so strong in the 1980s is doping. No one disputes this. 

Doping certainly did too, but it`s true that sport was very important there because of dignity + it was the only way to break out of poverty in the provinces, improve one's status, go abroad, etc. These are the two main factors.

 

However, you can invest in sports if you are a highly developed country, e.g. the UK: in the 1990s they were very weak and in 1996 they had a disastrous result in Atlanta. This hurt their pride and they invested a lot in sports + organizing the games in 2012. in London was the height of their glory. It made similar progress in the 21st century: The Netherlands, which now performs on par with Germany: a much larger and equally rich country.

Edited April 18 by copravolley

[OlympicsFan 791]

21 minutes ago, dodge said:

Is someone genuinely asking why Eastern bloc countries fell off in terms of sporting results after the arrival of democracy? 
 

East Germany only competed in 5 Olympics in rowing, but they won 48 medals, including 33 gold. They were only overtaken by the US in 2016 in the all time medal list (and they’re still ahead of the rest)

 

In Athletics, there’s still several European records that exist since the 80s with East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and the USSR all involved. 
 

This isn’t a slight on the fine people from Eastern Europe on here and the current athletes doing their best.

 

But the answer to why they were so strong in the 1980s is doping. No one disputes this. 

Obviously that is nonsense. Everyone at the top dopes (at least in somewhat relevant sports), Eastern Europeans just doped more ruthlessly. Whenever there is money involved, there is cheating. Makes no sense to assume that someone who isn’t doping can win gold, when the huge majority of people live in countries where doping pays off most of the time. Why should someone in Africa/Russia/China/India not dope, when they can become „rich“ by doing it and don’t really face much consequences even if they get caught? In order to outperform the most talented, doped athletes from those nations, you have to dope as well. There is nothing to suggest that people from rich nations are genetically superior and therefore don’t have to dope to beat the doped athletes from all those other nations (that represent at least 80 % of the global population/talent pool). 
 

Anyone who disagrees has to defend one of the following two lines of reasoning and in my opinion both don’t really make sense:

a) People in rich nations are somehow special and therefore don’t have to dope to dominate the most talented, doped up athletes from the rest of the world (that makes up at least 80 % of the talent pool)

b) There is no widespread doping in poorer nations (despite the evidence from countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Russia or China saying otherwise)

Edited April 18 by OlympicsFan

[OlympicsFan 791]

18 minutes ago, copravolley said:

Doping certainly did too, but it`s true that sport was very important there because of dignity + it was the only way to break out of poverty in the provinces, improve one's status, go abroad, etc. These are the two main factors.

 

However, you can invest in sports if you are a highly developed country, e.g. the UK: in the 1990s they were very weak and in 1996 they had a disastrous result in Atlanta. This hurt their pride and they invested a lot in sports + organizing the games in 2012. in London was the height of their glory. It made similar progress in the 21st century: The Netherlands, which now performs on par with Germany: a much larger and equally rich country.

Not sure I would call the UK highly developed …

More likely politicians like to use sports to masquerade all the other (real) problems (NHS, education system, housing problem, stagnating wages).

[copravolley 116]

4 minutes ago, OlympicsFan said:

Not sure I would call the UK highly developed …

More likely politicians like to use sports to masquerade all the other (real) problems (NHS, education system, housing problem, stagnating wages).

Sport is an important point in promoting the country and building its position on the World. It`s no coincidence that the USA is strongly competing with China for 1st place in the medal classification. The second thing is great sports individuals, e.g. in tennis. Serbia could spend 100x more on promoting its country than it does now and it would not achieve even 1% the effect that Novak Djokovic achieved during his 15-year career.

[dodge 889]

16 minutes ago, OlympicsFan said:

Obviously that is nonsense. Everyone at the top dopes (at least in somewhat relevant sports), Eastern Europeans just doped more ruthlessly. Whenever there is money involved, there is cheating. Makes no sense to assume that someone who isn’t doping can win gold, when the huge majority of people live in countries where doping pays off most of the time. Why should someone in Africa/Russia/China/India not dope, when they can become „rich“ by doing it and don’t really face much consequences even if they get caught? In order to outperform the most talented, doped athletes from those nations, you have to dope as well. There is nothing to suggest that people from rich nations are genetically superior and therefore don’t have to dope to beat the doped athletes from all those other nations (that represent at least 80 % of the global population/talent pool). 
 

Anyone who disagrees has to defend one of the following two lines of reasoning and in my opinion both don’t really make sense:

a) People in rich nations are somehow special and therefore don’t have to dope to dominate the most talented, doped up athletes from the rest of the world (that makes up at least 80 % of the talent pool)

b) There is no widespread doping in poorer nations (despite the evidence from countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Russia or China saying otherwise)

I enjoy you saying this is nonsense followed by “eastern Europeans just doped more ruthlessly”

 

So even when you agree with my point, you still have to argue. 
 

You remain unrivalled on here 

[Federer91 2,265]

40 minutes ago, dodge said:

Is someone genuinely asking why Eastern bloc countries fell off in terms of sporting results after the arrival of democracy? 
 

East Germany only competed in 5 Olympics in rowing, but they won 48 medals, including 33 gold. They were only overtaken by the US in 2016 in the all time medal list (and they’re still ahead of the rest)

 

In Athletics, there’s still several European records that exist since the 80s with East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and the USSR all involved. 
 

This isn’t a slight on the fine people from Eastern Europe on here and the current athletes doing their best.

 

But the answer to why they were so strong in the 1980s is doping. No one disputes this. 

 

Spoken truly like someone, who has read only headlines growing up and never bothered learning how the system was functioning. 

[dodge 889]

4 minutes ago, Federer91 said:

 

Spoken truly like someone, who has read only headlines growing up and never bothered learning how the system was functioning. 

I’ve actually studied this exact topic. The “system” was indeed the basis, but let’s not kid ourselves on doping here. 

[Federer91 2,265]

2 hours ago, copravolley said:

Bulgaria's best times in sports were at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s: in 1988 you won 35 medals, including 10 gold (I don`t count 1980 due to the boycott of many west countries). Later, until the beginning of the 21st century, you won a dozen or so medals in every games and suddenly there was a great crisis from Beijing 2008. Why? In theory, after joining the EU, the country should develop and become richer, which means there will also be more money for sports. The same problem concerned Romania but I see that they are slowly rising up, e.g. in rowing.

The country is growing in every aspect, bar the sporting one. And this has nothing to do with the EU, as the change started happening already in 1990. It just took 15 years for everything that was built in the prior decades to fully crumble. All results in the 90s and up to Athens was the last pipeline, that was structured in the old system.

 

The truth is, like JoshMartini mentioned, that sport funding, country wide structuring and people's mentality completely changed in one day after the old regime fell. The next day and upcoming years no one was thinking about sports as an important issue. On the contrary, it became the bottom of the barrel. Which is true to this day still. Every time there is a new Government, in the 20 or so Departments, that are structured, the Sports one is always not taken seriously and the sports Minister is looked like a joke amongst the rest. There were even years, when there was no Sports Ministry and sports were added as a backburner in the Education or Youth Ministry. 

 

Regardless of the money aspect, i have talked in length before on the old system and how it will never be duplicated. 

 

In those days, for every kid, from every town and village, it was mandatory to do sport already from 1 grade. Lots of sports, after school sports, not your typical 2 hours a week killing time, like in the present. Then there were agents, or a special committee, that had a job to go to every town, to every school and scout the best children and navigate them to which sport will be best suited for their abilities, so that they can start specifically training in their pre-teenage days. 

 

After that they were taken first from the local coaches, again every big town had training camps for a dozen sports, it wasn't just the one camp, where you could go train for gymnastics etc. Then there were selections between the different regions and only after that you were elevated to National team status and get the full system structure. 

 

Nothing like this is being done today. Kids are not only not encouraged to do sports, everything in the system actively tries to discourage them. Any top level athlete we have is purely based on the individual person's desire and a small team around them. 

 

I can also add the notion, that kids in the 70-90s were waking up and going to bed with only the thought of playing sports. It doesn't have to be on an organized level, just your regular play with friends. You couldn't find a street, where the neighboring children weren't playing. Even in my teen years, in the mid to late 00s, you had to wait your turn for a football field in my school, even though there are 5. Each of them were always taken, from schoolers to people on their 50s playing matches. You make a goal post on the street and play, it was a luxury to get a normal (concrete) pitch. 

 

You walk in the school today and you would be lucky to see 10 children play after school. Everything is phones, tik tok, instagram, video games, cafes etc. Who wants to sweat doing dumb sports.

 

Multiply that for the grind and dedication required for how many years before you become an elite athlete, garnered with non-existing funding, crumbling facilities, not enough knowledgeable coaches and staff in general and you get and optimistic prognosis of 5 medals. And yet, it would still be better, than a huge part of the World. People may laugh, but if we had even 40% of the system and desires from the 80s, we could be fighting for a top 20 in the medal table at least..

 

(Or you could still say it was only magical potions and mushrooms..)

Edited April 18 by Federer91

[Dkats 44]

Is this thread about paris medal predictions anymore or a history class 💀💀💀

[LDOG 2,250]

7 minutes ago, Dkats said:

Is this thread about paris medal predictions anymore or a history class 💀💀💀

It's more interesting than mocking the gracenote scam.