Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by ChaitanyaSai on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @02:11PM
(#267694)
No, there is some interesting data. The geo-politics embedded in it show up really well. East, west germany reunifying, Soviet Union disintegrating, the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott by the Americans, the back-at-you boycott in 84 by the Soviets, and Brazil becoming a force (as their economy strengthened perhaps?).
Edit: Also, Japan's absence from the '48 edition after the second world war. Fun going from the map to Wikipedia to find out the reason for some major perturbations.
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by lbrandy on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @02:53PM
(#267736)
Don't forget the original "steroid era". Baseball can't hold a candle to East Germany.
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by eru on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @10:41AM
(#268508)
Don't you like women with beards?
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by jonmc12 on Tuesday August 05, 2008 @04:02PM
(#267810)
Yea, its amazing to watch he buildup of Germany and Japan just before WWII.. and the the subsequent re-build.
Re:Great visualization of olympic medals won by year
by pchristensen on Wednesday August 06, 2008 @08:51AM
(#268405)
the only non-Communist country to have one
Is that why Cuba has so many medals starting in the 60s?
The only interesting point is the way that the host countries dominated the medal rankings for the first few decades. At the St Louis Olympics practically all the medals were taken home by US-based athletes.
Of course, it is no credit whatsoever to a country to take home medals at the Olympic games. I'm from Australia, a country which punches far above its weight in the Olympic games, but that's only because we have a taxpayer-funded National Institute of Sport to train the athletes (and are, to my understanding, the only non-Communist country to have one).