Triathlon

Two + Zero chaps. That's right, 20 gold medals now. :)

Over half as many as USA, a country that is 40 times larger than the UK. I think that makes us greater than america.
 
Merlin5 said:
Two + Zero chaps. That's right, 20 gold medals now. :)

Over half as many as USA, a country that is 40 times larger than the UK. I think that makes us greater than america.
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I'm guessing by 40 times larger you're talking physical area? At the moment Team GB is ahead of China who have a population of getting on for 1.4 billion or around 20 times more people than the UK.

Another great performance by the Brownlees, not forgetting Gordon Benson acting as a pacesetter as well. I don't think even Javier Gomez could have done much with them on that sort of form.
 
semi-pro waster said:
Another great performance by the Brownlees, not forgetting Gordon Benson acting as a pacesetter as well. I don't think even Javier Gomez could have done much with them on that sort of form.
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Was Benson actually anywhere near them at any point, he certainly wasnt at any point on the bike / run?

(I wasnt listening full on, as I was at work, but it appeared as though the commentators were struggling to identify most of the swimmers)
 
Nope. He was in the chase group with Mola, fell off his bike and had to retire. :p

edit: just checked and he was 40 odd seconds behind after the swim.
 
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Merlin5 said:
Two + Zero chaps. That's right, 20 gold medals now. :)

Over half as many as USA, a country that is 40 times larger than the UK. I think that makes us greater than america.
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Population size is largely irrelevant since a country can typically only send 2 people per event. If countries could send a number of athletes in proportion to their population size then it would be interesting to look at medals per capita.


Britain's success is largely due to how they focusing funding on the most liekly events to give medals. That might make sense at a shallow level but it has horrible effects on many sports when they simply don't happen to have good athletes at that time. It makes for a self perpetuating circle where sports that Britain does well at this particular time will continue to get stronger but sports that just happened to be weaker at the current time will get worse an worse.
Long term it could diminish the total medal horde.
 
But GB has won gold medals (and medals in general afaik) across more sports than anyone else in this olympics.
 
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I missed most of the event cause I was at work. I'm glad the BBC Sports site has all the streams stored so we can rewatch stuff later. Hopefully they don't pull all those videos too quickly after the Olympics end.
 
D.P. said:
Population size is largely irrelevant since a country can typically only send 2 people per event. If countries could send a number of athletes in proportion to their population size then it would be interesting to look at medals per capita.


Britain's success is largely due to how they focusing funding on the most liekly events to give medals. That might make sense at a shallow level but it has horrible effects on many sports when they simply don't happen to have good athletes at that time. It makes for a self perpetuating circle where sports that Britain does well at this particular time will continue to get stronger but sports that just happened to be weaker at the current time will get worse an worse.
Long term it could diminish the total medal horde.
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There is a funding focus / bias, but it's not as severe as you suggest. If you look at the full list of Olympic sports:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/rio-2016/sports

31 sports and Team GB have medalled in 19 of them so far, likely to be 20 by the end. Gold medals in 13 different sports, which could rise to 15 by the end. And we've come close to a medal in at least half a dozen other sports.

It's not just about traditionally strong sports such as Cycling and Rowing, there's been successes in a wide range of sports.

A fair bit of success in Rio is from athletes who did well in London 2012 repeating their achievements, or some cases improving on it. But pundits across the range of sports seem to agree there's lots of new talent coming through for Tokyo.

I'm not saying that some sports haven't lost out in the funding merry-go-round, but the net seems to be cast quite wide.
 
D.P. said:
Population size is largely irrelevant since a country can typically only send 2 people per event. If countries could send a number of athletes in proportion to their population size then it would be interesting to look at medals per capita.
.
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Surely population size is very relevant as the more population you have the more likely you will be able to find a gold medal contender in front crawl, backstroke & multiple diving events rather than just one or two - let alone all the different other sports like Hockey, Judo, Rugby 7 etc etc . Also the more talent actually available to be selected means the higher quality within the team challenging each other to do better.

Its not just about the people actually at the Olympics , you also have to think of the whole team supporting them and left back at home.

Cern said:
I'm not saying that some sports haven't lost out in the funding merry-go-round, but the net seems to be cast quite wide.
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Definitely agree with this as well. As stated previously a few years ago GB only did well in Cycling and Rowing and maybe the occasional track and field when a top quality star came along. Now we are seeing hockey, Tkwondo (I know I spelt that wrong haha), Judo, Rugby 7 - admittedly a little different as this has only just started in the Olymipcs and several sports as well.
 
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Just finished watching the Triathalon from start to finish. Beautiful result from Britain. I love that Alistair Brownlee had enough of a lead that he could slow down and walk over the finish line :)
 
FrankJH said:
Was Benson actually anywhere near them at any point, he certainly wasnt at any point on the bike / run?

(I wasnt listening full on, as I was at work, but it appeared as though the commentators were struggling to identify most of the swimmers)
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My mistake then, I was reading the text commentary and saw his name mentioned a few times so thought he'd had an influence on the race. It was certainly what he was selected for but perhaps the Brownlees were just so good yesterday that he was rendered irrelevant.
 
GB's 62nd medal comes in with a bronze for Holland, Stanford looked devastated with 4th ~5 seconds behind. :)
 
Incredible run by Gwen Jorgensen. She still looked like she was jogging even though she left the 2nd runner for dead on that last lap.
 
It took a lot longer for Gwen Jorgensen to build a lead than I thought it might but that's a lot of credit to Nicole Spirig. Well done to Vicky Holland for a hard fought bronze, such a pity for Non Stanford but a very good performance all the same.
 
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