[Ghostavo]

Let me put it this way. If top scorer of the year can be won by Cristiano Ronaldo or Wayne Rooney do you say it's uncompetitive because they both play for Manchester United? Would you say that everyone should pick one individual they like and not be able to say that they don't care who wins as long as it's a Man U player who beats everyone else?

But that's an award that's separate from the sport itself. They didn't have to participate in a tournament where the prize for first place was "top scorer of the year". It's not exactly relevant to the discussion at hand.

In the case of the Olympics there is more personal achievement in winning an individual event than in a team sport like football but that doesn't mean you can simply discount the team's achievement completely.

If a team wins, it's the team's win, not their entire country's win. Not all those couch potatos' at home win, or their closest rival's at home win, it's their own and nobody else's win. To make it count towards some medal count demeans those athletes and the spirit of the Olympics.

[karajorma]

By that logic any football supporter who says "My team won!" demeans their football teams victory. After all they did nothing to help them win except cheering and giving them money via ticket sales.

[Ghostavo]

By that logic any football supporter who says "My team won!" demeans their football teams victory. After all they did nothing to help them win except cheering and giving them money via ticket sales.

His team won opposed to his "country" won event ABC in the Olympic games. See the difference?

He didn't win, the team won. He attributed credit to where it's due. In the second he didn't.

[karajorma]

He's called it his team however. Which then brings us to the point of exactly what makes it his. Why is he taking a personal stake in the victory of a team who have nothing to do with him.

[Ghostavo]

But he isn't a part of the team. It's his team because he supports it, not because he is part of it. Spectators' psychology is not exactly my forte.

Regardless, I think you should ask for your money back and so should I unfortunatly.

[karajorma]

So consequently if the athletes say that their country is their team you'd withdraw your objections?

[Ghostavo]

Yes and no. If they are ok with being treated like that it's their problem, even though other athletes might not feel the same.

But the fact remains that the Olympic spirit (not to mention the Olympic charter) is not being followed.

[WMCoolmon]

However if a country which won one silver medal organises the Olympics table to put them at the top and say "WE WON THE OLYMPICS!" then yes I'm going to laugh at them cause it's delusional.

Which isn't at all what ESPN did. Even in your own words, earlier in the thread, you stated that:

The system American websites are using on the other hand says nothing of value. The best you can sum it up is as "It doesn't matter if you're best at the Olympics as long as you are amongst the best"

That's a far cry from "WE WON THE OLYMPICS!". That's also what it seems like any country which ranked itself first despite not placing anywhere near the top in terms of medals would be saying. So since you're willing to deride ESPN for doing that, but not websites for any other country, I conclude that you're just talking **** about America because you want to do that more than sort the table by golds or use a different website that orders it the way you want.

Of course, even if you go to the official website, they still rank the countries by total medals as well as gold medals, and don't use any kind of point system in tallying the total.

[karajorma]

They also rank the countries by silver medals. But no one uses that ranking because it's stupid.

And as I said before, if you point out a website from another country using a stupid system to rank the medals I'll take the piss out of them too. I'm only taking the piss out of the Americans because I haven't seen anyone else doing it. If you can point to a website from the Bahamas which is placing them as the winners in its default configuration because it's working on medals divided by population I'll quite happily take the piss out of them too.

Not as much perhaps cause anyone from the Bahamas would probably laugh with me and agree that it was silly.

If you found a nation which organized the table not on golds but on silvers or bronzes and put themselves on top cause of that I'd mercilessly take the piss. Unfortunately I'd probably get accused of anti-Americanism again since they got the most of those two types.

[Kie99]

Wat?

It's over?

Man I didn't even see any of it.

Who won?

Phelps

That's right, you want to talk **** about America. I'm sure that every country that participated in the Olympics devoted a disproportionate amount of time and attention to their athletes and the number of medals won. Yet I don't see you or karajorma complaining about that.

If everybody were to follow your standards, every news station would be showing the same thing, talking about all the athletes from first-world nations who had the luxury of sending a lot of athletes who won a lot of medals. That would be unreasonable and inconsiderate to those countries who only sent a few athletes, but still managed to win a medal or even just break some records. Or hell, maybe just the big deal is that they were able to participate this year at all.

Let me ask you this. Did you care enough, in your crusade against bias, to actually check the websites of Mauritius, Togo, and Moldova? Or did you just kind of skip over those because you didn't care?

And in case you ask, I didn't bother to look either, but neither am I going to complain if they decide to list themselves first.

I'm frankly amazed at how defensive someone can get over me commenting on a link someone posted.  Of course I didn't go around checking Mauritian websites, no-one posted links to them.  If Mauritius had the most medals overall, and someone posted a link to their medal table listing them as first I'd have laughed at that.  It's not anti-American, or a "crusade against bias" it was just one instance of blatant bias that I found to be unusual considering every other medal table I've seen has listed the countries by Gold medals first.  I sincerely apologise if I've wounded your sense of national pride.

[Mongoose]

The whole point that a few of us were arguing in here to begin with was that the "total medals count" method wasn't showing any particular national bias to begin with, but rather a sort of "significance bias" medal-wise.  That same argument could be made in the opposite way for the gold-ranking list, at least so long as it wasn't labeled "Gold Medal Count."  That's it, really.  I certainly didn't see any need to get overly defensive about any of this from any party...as long as we all agree at the end of the day that China was h@xing in women's gymnastics.

[WMCoolmon]

I'm frankly amazed at how defensive someone can get over me commenting on a link someone posted.  Of course I didn't go around checking Mauritian websites, no-one posted links to them.  If Mauritius had the most medals overall, and someone posted a link to their medal table listing them as first I'd have laughed at that.  It's not anti-American, or a "crusade against bias" it was just one instance of blatant bias that I found to be unusual considering every other medal table I've seen has listed the countries by Gold medals first.  I sincerely apologise if I've wounded your sense of national pride.

(1) I don't agree with the statement that ranking the medals by total is "worthless", but it seems even less constructive to pursue that topic. There's lots of complexity you could bring up in terms of ranking medals with each other - for instance, does 1/100 of a second really mean that a gold medal is worth that much more than a silver?
(2) It really is tiring to have people throwing around your nationality and generalizing everybody who's a part of that nation over things that a fraction of a segment of people have any kind of direct control over.
(3) It's very hard to not see it as criticism of America when that's the unifying word being used. It's not "ESPN", it's an "American website". I could analyze your choice of words but I think it would be better to give a similar example.

If I were talking about "intolerant Muslims" and comparing them to Jews, painting the "intolerant Muslims" in a bad light and "Jews" in a neutral to good light, do you think it would be reasonable for somebody who was Muslim to object?

I think it would be. If you don't understand why, we may just be reading things differently.

[Kie99]

I'm frankly amazed at how defensive someone can get over me commenting on a link someone posted.  Of course I didn't go around checking Mauritian websites, no-one posted links to them.  If Mauritius had the most medals overall, and someone posted a link to their medal table listing them as first I'd have laughed at that.  It's not anti-American, or a "crusade against bias" it was just one instance of blatant bias that I found to be unusual considering every other medal table I've seen has listed the countries by Gold medals first.  I sincerely apologise if I've wounded your sense of national pride.

(1) I don't agree with the statement that ranking the medals by total is "worthless", but it seems even less constructive to pursue that topic. There's lots of complexity you could bring up in terms of ranking medals with each other - for instance, does 1/100 of a second really mean that a gold medal is worth that much more than a silver?

Yes it is, because it means you won.

(2) It really is tiring to have people throwing around your nationality and generalizing everybody who's a part of that nation over things that a fraction of a segment of people have any kind of direct control over.
(3) It's very hard to not see it as criticism of America when that's the unifying word being used. It's not "ESPN", it's an "American website". I could analyze your choice of words but I think it would be better to give a similar example.

If I were talking about "intolerant Muslims" and comparing them to Jews, painting the "intolerant Muslims" in a bad light and "Jews" in a neutral to good light, do you think it would be reasonable for somebody who was Muslim to object?

The word "American" is relevant because they're showing bias towards America.  If it had been Moldovan website, I would have said "the Moldovan website"  If the Muslim did object he'd be overly defensive in my view as long as you're not referring to all Muslims as intolerant

[karajorma]

If someone made a table ranking religions and put Islam at the top based on similar nonsense you can bet I'd laugh at it too.

Right up until the death threats started.

[Mars]

If someone put religions through something like the Olympics, I think I'd laugh anyway.

[Excalibur]

Who can pray non-stop without repeating for the longest amount of time...
Prayernastics...
Longest ohme meditation...
Most stunning prayer position...
Rush to the temple (of death!!!)
Mountain templing (mountain bike from the temple race)
The tempathlon.

and I think someone needs to include stone throwing (by distance) in the Olympics. That would be interesting, seeing someone throw something 100m. (A fifty gram steel ball, so no aerodynamic advantage for "slingers" over "over armers")