rajiv

WOW What a surprise! A USA Canada Gold medal match in women's ice hockey. Just like every other gold medal match in women's ice hockey Can't get much more universal than that! Looking forward to lacrosse being an Olympic event do we can have a lot more Canada USA gold medal games

Criticism of the Commonwealth Games existence by non-Commonwealth citizens has been pretty common on this site. Funny how none of the other non-geographical based Games don't get such treatment although maybe they just aren't noticed. Beats me why these Comm Games haters are so bothered.

People here a bit tough on Australia(again!) Looking at their team I'd say that the only soft qualifications they have are in boxing -Australia has remarkably little interest in all the combative sports -and they give out a huge number of medals especially to Japan in judo .Sth Korea in twaekwondo ,Italy in fencing etc etc - and synchronised swimming - the one aquatic discipline which is considered a joke by most (sorry ladies ) New Zealand is the country with the soft entry in association football.They would be favourites to come last (again) in both tournaments

Reading over this topic reinforces my firm impression that Australia and Australians are not particularly liked by many on this site

I think the main point is that Australia wants marketable home games which mean something and can draw a crowd When in Oceania they had one every four years-the inter continental playoff for the World Cup ie one game where they could fill a stadium Now New Zealand has replaced Australia as the" superpower " of the South Pacific and will now get an automatic place at every FIFA tournament(where they vie for last place) Means plenty of trips for the NZ suits and FIFA money If FIFA is intent with giving a very soft place at every tournament surely it would make more sense to give it to a billion population country like China or India Oceania has only 2 members with over a million people-NZ has 5 million people

Ski Mountaineering looks pretty spectacular. However, any sport/ event where 90% + of the competitors/medallists are from the one continent really shouldn't qualify for Olympic inclusion. The Olympics shouldn't be another Continental Championship. There must be a significant element of universality

I've long noted a strong anti Australia attitude on this site Guess they are the obvious target for many users who resent the large teams Australia qualifies for Olympics or maybe it's just Europeans being European and pessimistic about everything and looking for someone to vent their anger on Americans of course see all non Americans (aliens?) as inherently inferior

I've long held the view that there should be a transparent objective system to make these usually contentious decisions. I would grant the Games to the country which has won the most medals since last hosting (guess this would be Germany or Hungary but I haven't checked) And by "grant" I mean that they have first refusal rights. Maybe this means some regions would never host so I would allow nations to effectively "donate" medals to another country so that for instance ,there could be an African Games if that was widely approved of. No country deserves the Games just because they claim "it's our turn" when it really isn't

This a very Eastern Europe view Grand Slam events are the much bigger deal in the rest of the world All the Commo countries considered the Olympics the be all and end all.They were (are?) of the view that Olympic medal counts are everything in sport The Berlin Wall was toppled in 1989 by the way

Yeah like ethe wintersport schedule is such a big deal in an Australian January Over half of singles games are 1st round-64 of 127- so it makes sense to spread them over 3 days (including a weekend day)

Is there any event where you don't think Canada is an outside chance of a medal?

Just for the record Oceania wins more Olympic medals than Africa. So I guess Africa is the weakest continent overall. Hard political sell these days though. Oceania is hopeless at all the combative sports however. (and there are so many medals in this grouping) Australia and NZ are very good at water sports In fact I'd say that they are ordinary in all gymnasium indoor sports. To them sport is an outdoor activity

I'm aware there is competition among some between baseball and cricket as to which is the more international game. Judging by what an absolute joke some of these so called national baseball teams are I call no contest I bet there are more than a few players who have never set foot in the country they represent

So Eurocentric In the real world Australia is always in the top 10 but not apparently in the Totallympics world

Bring in a rule that the number of Winter events cannot be more than 20% of the number of Summer events . At the moment it's about a third , Before WWII the ratio was about eight to one . This seems about right but nowadays TV ( mainly NBC ) want lotsa content so would be difficult to so drastically cull events Nothing, however, to stop many of the events being renamed demonstration events . Some , like female ice hockey , really aren't international events at all . Some winter medals have similar status to summer medals but not very many