Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="The Yakk, post: 5055794, member: 9988"] My wife lives and dies every day with the gold medal table. It kills her when China wins one to pull ahead. But when the U.S. wins one she gets a double dose of joy--both for the athlete and the U.S.'s medal standings. Same for a bunch of our friends. Since I can't tell my wife this is a sad and stupid obsession, I will come here to vent: A country's gold medal haul is straight-up [B]purchased[/B]. The U.S. spent a ton of money to send a massive contingent of athletes to Paris; so did China, and so did the other medal leaders. She is basically rooting for money. Here are the stats I would like to see: [LIST] [*]Medal counts as a rate based on population [*]Medal counts as a rate based on the size of the Olympic contingent [*]Medal counts as a rate based on money spent [/LIST] I would like to root for the countries that perform far in excess of their resources. Go St. Lucia! There was only one time in the history of the Olympics that medal counts actually mattered: that was 1984. Older members will remember this. MacDonalds ran a promotion where you would get a scratch-off card with an Olympic event. If the U.S. won gold then the card got you a Big Mac; silver got small fries; and bronze got a coke. And you could win multiple items on the same card if the U.S. won more than one medal. MacDonalds probably has a good idea what the promotion would cost them. Then the USSR and its satellite countries pulled out of the Olympics. The U.S. ended up winning [B]everything[/B]. I was in college then, and my roommates and I basically ate free MacDonalds for an entire summer. It was glorious. And it must have cost MacDonalds tens of $millions. Good times! [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach