skippy the wonder dog Wrote:grimes Wrote:As of right now:
China - 1 medal for every 16.5 million people
USA - 1 medal for every 3.7 million people
Canada - 1 medal for every 2.5 million people
:thumb:
How's India doing?
Haha, no so hot. About 1 per 550 million.
Meanwhile, Jamaica is kicking our ass.
grimes Wrote:As of right now:
China - 1 medal for every 16.5 million people
USA - 1 medal for every 3.7 million people
Canada - 1 medal for every 2.5 million people
:thumb:
Whoa. Canada won a bunch of medals since I last checked. :oops:
So what was that about "funding and supporting" amateur sport for demonstratve purposes, skippy? :mrgreen:
I knew that Canada could row. But who knew that y'all were such accomplished trampoline-jumpers? :what
was anybody watching last night when Ron Mclean said his mother had died and he was leaving?? It's sad, but I felt it was a little strange for him to be so up front and, i don't want to say he was "enjoying" the moment, but he didn't seem to be all that upset....weird.
The Horrible Esthete Wrote:So what was that about "funding and supporting" amateur sport for demonstratve purposes, skippy?
The point is, we don't fund amateur sport and we're still able to demonstrate our convincing superiority.
What can I say?
Actually, the summer games aren't where the US is strong. Since football is excluded, for example, there is no gold medal to be won for the two-armed beer-and-potato-chip lift.
opiated Wrote:was anybody watching last night when Ron Mclean said his mother had died and he was leaving?? It's sad, but I felt it was a little strange for him to be so up front and, i don't want to say he was "enjoying" the moment, but he didn't seem to be all that upset....weird.
Yeah I saw it, from the sounds of her condition it wasn't unexpected though. Having been through a similar situation with a grandparent not too long ago I image he'd probably already come to terms with it, said what he wanted to say to her, etc., so I'm not surprsied he wasn't visibly upset. If anything at that point, after a long battle with a terminal illness, it's almost a feeling of relief that she won't be suffering anymore.
Just my $0.02.
skippy the wonder dog Wrote:The point is, we don't fund amateur sport and we're still able to demonstrate our convincing superiority.
But the truth is that Canada
does fund amateur sport, and furthermore, the US is one of a very
very few countries that does
not federally fund amateur sport.
Canadian government will spend $166 million in 2008-09 on both winter and summer sport.
The USOC receives no direct funding from the feds; it funds its amateur athletes through private sponsorship, donations, television rights, and surplus from the 1984 Olympics in LA.
skippy the wonder dog Wrote:Since football is excluded, for example, there is no gold medal to be won for the two-armed beer-and-potato-chip lift.
Well if that should ever change, the USOC has a beer-and-chip lift champion (not to mention a red-meateater of Phelpsian proportions) waiting in the wings right here! :wink:
grimes Wrote:opiated Wrote:was anybody watching last night when Ron Mclean said his mother had died and he was leaving?? It's sad, but I felt it was a little strange for him to be so up front and, i don't want to say he was "enjoying" the moment, but he didn't seem to be all that upset....weird.
Yeah I saw it, from the sounds of her condition it wasn't unexpected though. Having been through a similar situation with a grandparent not too long ago I image he'd probably already come to terms with it, said what he wanted to say to her, etc., so I'm not surprsied he wasn't visibly upset. If anything at that point, after a long battle with a terminal illness, it's almost a feeling of relief that she won't be suffering anymore.
Just my $0.02.
It is a shame that she passed on. But I am glad he is gone. Summer Olympics and he is still making hockey references and comments about Don Cherry half the time.
Scott Russell did a much better job hosting the Prime Time show than Ron last night. You can see that he is excited for the athletes. He was good to watch.
The Horrible Esthete Wrote:skippy the wonder dog Wrote:The point is, we don't fund amateur sport and we're still able to demonstrate our convincing superiority.
But the truth is that Canada does fund amateur sport, and furthermore, the US is one of a very very few countries that does not federally fund amateur sport.
The US may not federally fund amateur sport, but nonetheless there is far more funding splashing around in the US for amateur sports than in other countries, including Canada, and there is absolutely no doubt that (going back to the Cold War) the US has used the Olympics as a means of demonstrating national superiority, for ideological reasons. Being able to proclaim that the money doesn't come from the feds is part of that.
Using the words "federal funding" in this context is playing hide the salami. Canada's competitiveness in hockey doesn't come from federal funding, but there is all kinds of money poured into amateur hockey in this country from other sources.
The US sports system is not as pernicious as the Chinese, but the aim is the same: to demonstrate national superiority to the world.
Canada's federal sports funding is minimal -- yes, we have federal funding, but it is much less than comparable countries.
The Horrible Esthete Wrote:skippy the wonder dog Wrote:The point is, we don't fund amateur sport and we're still able to demonstrate our convincing superiority.
But the truth is that Canada does fund amateur sport, and furthermore, the US is one of a very very few countries that does not federally fund amateur sport.
Canadian government will spend $166 million in 2008-09 on both winter and summer sport.
The USOC receives no direct funding from the feds; it funds its amateur athletes through private sponsorship, donations, television rights, and surplus from the 1984 Olympics in LA.
skippy the wonder dog Wrote:Since football is excluded, for example, there is no gold medal to be won for the two-armed beer-and-potato-chip lift.
Well if that should ever change, the USOC has a beer-and-chip lift champion (not to mention a red-meateater of Phelpsian proportions) waiting in the wings right here! :wink:
You can only compete if you have snaggle toothedness of Phelpsian proportions as well.
But you said "Canada" doesn't fund amateur sports and the "United States" does, and that is simply untrue.
The US, as an entity, doesn't spend one red cent on training and development of amateur athletes. But Canada, as an entity, is spending $166 million in 2008-2009 alone. That dollar-figure is 5 times the national population. Thus, “Canada” definitively funds its amateur athletes, and “the US” does not.
Now -- if you meant to say that “Canadian amateurs don't have the same proportion of funds at their disposal that US amateurs do”, then I wouldn't be so quick to refute -- because I honestly have no idea if that's true or not. It appears that the USOC budget for the 2005-2008 quadrennium was somewhere around $550 million. Of course, there is a large amount of “personal” costs, private donations, and corporate sponsorships associated amateur athletics in the US (and Canada too, I’m sure) that is not part of the respective Olympic Committee budget, but how either you or I could even begin to quantify those monies is beyond me.
But aside from all that -- this notion that the “aim” of the development and training of amateur athletes in the United States is to “demonstrate national supremacy” doesn’t sit well with me. In fact, I think it’s a crock. You can say that about Germany under Hitler (and beyond), USSR during the cold war, China (for god knows how long), etc., but you’re lumping the US into that category just because we’ve been a prominent world power who has had success in Olympic competition. For the US, that success is first and foremost a byproduct of the “business” of athletics in our society, and secondly is a result of the emphasis our culture places on athletic competition amongst ourselves.
Sure, America takes a heckuvalot of pride in being competitive in international athletic competition, but again -- the United States, as an entity, doesn’t drive that attitude for the purposes of attaining global recognition and proclaiming our nation as “supreme”. No, it’s the associated financial payoff resulting from the investment in and the sponsorship of domestic winners and champions that drives the machine.
It’s about beating the Joneses next door and making money (mostly for somebody else) while doing it.
Simon Whitfield who won a Silver Medal in the triathlon mentions The Hip:
ROCKIN' TO THE HIP Simon Whitfield, the Canadian institution, cited another vaunted Canadian institution for theme song that fuelled his charge to the podium.
"There's a Tragically Hip song, Courage," Whitfield said, with a silver medal around his neck in the press tent at Ming Tombs Reservoir.
"And we had the courage to put it out there that this is what we wanted to do.
"Triathlon Canada had the courage to support that, and I'm very, very proud of that. Because I was afraid."
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/sports/story.html?id=b7521c22-6265-45d4-8f38-84e1b81fd781">http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/news/ ... e1b81fd781</a><!-- m -->
Is the US, a nation, or a government?
These are two different things, Esthete.
skippy the wonder dog Wrote:Is the US, a nation, or a government?
These are two different things, Esthete.
Thanks for the differentiation.
You know darn well that if I said something like "Canada does more to provide for its impoverished population than the US", you'd receive that statement as a comment on the level of effort shown by the national entity (governing body), not as a comment on the level of individual effort amongst the collective citizenship.
Obviously, I assumed you were referring to each nation as an entity (silly me), but I refute your claim no matter
which you meant.
There are nations whose amateur athletic programs have functioned as systemic component of an Olympic medal-winning machine for the sake of demonstrating some sort of national supremacy. It is a strech to say that US has
ever been one of them, and in the present day, such a claim is absolutely bunk. Corporate sponsors don't get involved with amateur althetics in hopes to show that our nation can piss futher than another for two-week period every four years. Community clubs & organizations don't hold bake sales and car washes so that we can puff our chests on the global stage somewhere down the road.
Sponsors have their own interests, and the athletes are individually driven to rise above their competitors at any given level, whomever they might be. And after years of development and training to those ends, best are culled to represent their nation in international competion, and are
then funded by OC grants and stipends as they train for Olympic qualification and competition.
I'm assuming that this is also how it works in Canada and any other nation who doesn't rip childern from their families and ship them to Olympic training camps, or inject atletes with growth hormones against their will.