copravolley

So far, only Iapichino has disappointed in our team, but Battocletti's medal and those in the marathon today have made up for her loss.

And this bronze it`s in olimpic competition (silver for Palmisano no...)

0-2-2 for Italy now in medal table. Miss only gold...

I live in Poland until 2000, so I still remember some things from my childhood

Tanzania it`s a stabile country?

Malinowski, Kwiatkowski, Kowalski it were a typicall surname in Poland

3 and 6 place for Italy. New Stefano Baldini?

Bronze for Italy!

Top-8 for Italy will be good in Marathon.

Beautiful country.

Small chance for Italy in Marathon.

Yemen Crippa not looking very good

I like this old Soviet song

The DDR used steroids more than, for example, other countries from the Eastern camp, with the exception of the USSR perhaps?

You're right, but what mattered was the symbol that went out to the world: a big bear from Russia lost to someone from the USA, while the average person didn't look at the statistics of medals, you wrote about. I remember that day on Eurosportnews channel the news about Karelin's loss was broadcast from morning till night, as the most important news of the Games.

Every domination must always end and Karelin maybe should have retreated earlier? Karelin's defeat symbolically showed the end of the USSR's era of power- almost 10 years after its actual fall. A highly symbolic event.

There's some truth to this, but unfortunately, Cuba is now still poor and increasingly weaker in sports, and that won't change anytime soon. Poland, for example, is rich enough to invest more in sports and win a large number of medals. Cuba no longer has that option- it has no choice.

But he won OG gold and he defeated Karelin. This man has already made history of sports.

It depends on which path Cuba would take: for example, the path of Brazil or Venezuela/Haiti. It could go either way. It depends on who comes to power there and how powerful they are. Paradoxically, before Castro's revolution, Cuba was one of the richest country in the region: yes, the USA had a lot of influence there, but the country was not poor or bankrupt.

In the first years after reunification, Germany was very strong until the late 1990s (you can see the medal table of Summer OG 1992) but only later did they weaken, but I don't know why. On paper, Germany should be better than the UK and France, not to mention Italy (I'm referring to economic factors, GDP, and population). It seems to me that Germany has recently been investing more heavily in winter sports, where it is the largest powerhouse alongside Norway and the USA.

But there would be no desertions or escapes from the country.

I wonder where Cuba would be today if communism had fallen in the early 1990s? Sportingly speaking. Would they be somewhere in the top 10 of the OG medal table, or also would they have a some problems?