you are from russia, you have perfect own examples. compare what you won as soviet union and now only russia, compare all ex soviet union countries which each other. the ones with the biggest population win more than the smaller ones (uzbekistan is a exeption)

sry but that is totally false. gdr was so good because every athlete used the craziest dope you could get. i'm from germany and i know what athletes from that time said what they took (they say they didn't know and got said it's just vitamines from their old coaches lol...) if now the same coaches train chinese swimmers and they are so successful now, you can imagine why. do you know why they don't work in germany anymore? one reason is because no one wants to see them here anymore because we know what they did with the athletes.

if you don't have such a huge population you can only be good in few sports or if you dope like gdr athletes did or if you invest much more per capita than as example usa. if you really believe usa would get the same amount of medals with a population of netherlands then you are crazy.

as example, usa has a lot of huge cities, many more schools and everything because of the population. should make sense that they get more athletes out of that and that they obviously have more sport facilities as a country like denmark which has only one bigger city and 1/50 or so of sport facilities because of the small population.

should make sense that if there is theoretically one perfect swimmer of 5 million people, that usa has more chances to find one of them as a country which only has 2 of them who could be theoretically the best. and if you have 30 big cities with 30 big basketball teams it is also obvious that you have a better chance to have more good players than a country like denmark has in basketball even if they would try to build a good basketball team^^ it's like you would say usa could have the same basketball team if you would only take players from chicago and no athletes from other cities.

you will never ever see netherlands win as much medals as usa and i'm sure they do more for sports than usa compared to every single capita.

sure, investments are also important like you could see in uk or greece or we will see in brazil but only if you as smaller country invest more per capita than a huge developed country you have a chance to compete (and if you are as small as greecce you still couldn't win 100+ medals). should be clear that if you want to invest the same like usa to get good athletes but only have 1/20 of population, that you would have to invest 20x as much per capita to reach the same which should be not so easy.

that you really take the gdr as example how a small country can be one of the best is really enough to show that your post is wrong, no clue why i wrote so much...

Of course population and more importantly wealth have something to do with it. What planet are you on?

You are correct when you stated that infrastructure, social programs, sports popularity helps but can third world countries afford to invest in rowing facilities, sailing equipment, olympic pools, equestian facilities, cycling velodromes etc.,?  No. African swimmers train in the sea because there are no pools big enough in their countrises.

Grenada won a gold from a population of 110,000 people. Can they compete with China's 1.4bn? No.

Chinese success came with billions spent. From 5 gold in 1988 to where they are now in 2012 and I believe they will leave the US way behind in four years time.

To mention the dope fueled GDR is offensive and an insult to sport lovers. Their coaches openly admitted to doping and everyone knew it even before they admitted it. It's amazing how many world records set by the GDR still stands that were set between 1984 and 1989.

Their female runners could have probably beaten Bolt in a sprint.

Pretty sure you meant Australian coaches, some of them even train here in Australia, Sun Yang worked with Grant Hackett's coach I think.

Maybe they did in the early 90s seeing how their women's team were caught for mass doping, but right now, I don't think anyone is dump enough to touch anything GDR given their poor reputation.

So all GDR victories are thanks to doping? :D

Consider this. Every team was in similar situation like everyone else, if they weren't caught like everyone else it's not their problem, it's a problem of IOC. Their victories are valid and couldn't be canceled in retrospect just because you want to.

Here's Germany's 'progress' in gold medals starting from 1988:

48 (GDR+FRG) > 33  > 20 > 13 > 13 > 16 > 11

If it'd be all thanks to doping the winning phase would have dropped to 11 starting from 1992. In reality it's a slow way down due to simple fact, despite bigger population, investment in sports (or their effecitvity) were down, down and down. As for the USSR example, it's not total population that matter, but 'athletes population', which has decreased in a blink of an eye, and general lack of investment in sports for 10 years.

God Damn It!

Beaten by Denmark? HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE???

Oh well, at least we got the handball Gold medal >:)

a lot of athletes still started for germany in 1992 and just because there was no gdr anymore doesn't mean there did no one work for athletes anymore from the gdr time. it's not as if they would have said "oh, no gdr anymore, let's stop with everything" from one to the next year so no, it wouldn't have dropped from one to the next olympics like you think just because it was dope in gdr.

you said people try to find excuses but in reality you are the one who tries to defend russian medals saying it has nothing to do with population size. i'm pretty sure that's what you try here but almost no one would come to that idea, you are the only one who thinks that. i don't believe someone from usa here believes usa would win the same medals if tehy wouldn#t have so many mega cities with sports facilities and instead of that usa would be only new york and no other city/place. and i'm pretty sure my country germany would win less than 44 medals if germany would only have the population of belgium. and yes we could be better if we would invest more but it's just not possible to beat china and usa over the long run. we are always the best or second best winter sports nation so at least if you count summer and winter olympics we are much closer to russia and usa. but if the whole usa would be a winter sport nation and not only few places, countries like norway or germany would also have no chance in winter olympics anymore.

i gave you an example with soviet russia compared to only russia which has also a drop. i explained you that the ex soviet russian countries with a bigger population are more successful than the ones with only a few million except one country with a big population.

and no one says it was all only because of dope, it surely helps to invest more like i already said and you can see with nations like uk this time or greece in athen and yes, gdr loved to throw money away just to be good in sports instead of investing it for more important stuff but that doesn't change the fact that a country can't compete with russia, china or usa if it is as big as denmark or so and doesn't use as much of the worst doping the world has ever seen like the gdr did. i'm from germany and i know what ex athletes said, so don't try to tell me it isn't true if ex athletes say they took the worst shit you can imagine to be better.

don't you understand a simple fact? if usa has 310 million population they have

1. much  more potential athletes

2. they have to invest less per capita and still can invest much more. if usa invests one billion in facilities and whatever it is only $3 dollar per capita, if denmark would invest the same money they would have to invest much more per capita. so it is much less expensive for usa compared to the whole eco-system of a country than it is for a smaller country to get the same amount of medals.

just look at the medals and which country won most. just look at small countries and look in which sports they are good. a country like jamaica can win some medals but they just can't compete in every freaking competition as much as usa can, is that so hard to understand? if you specialize in one thing like jamaica you can have the best in that even if you are small but do you know how much jamaica would have to invest per capita to win let's say 50 medals? and if china will have the same wealth per capita the usa has, china won#t be beatable anymore but that will still take some time.

and if you feel like people want to downplay the success of russia because they are always so good, no one says they are a abd sports nation in reality, just that they would win some less medals if russia wouldn't have some big cities and would only have 10 million population. they would win maybe 20 medals then which would be still impressive but if you really believe russia would have won the same amount of medals like they did with only 5% of the population you are crazy.

East Germany's metal count from 1976, 1980, and 1988 are a prime examples of doping in sports.  The 1980 team was the most juiced team of all time not having the US compete that year also helped a lot plus since it was held in Moscow also helped since their probably was no testing for banned substances.  Also when you compare East Germany's metal count from 1968 and 1972 you can see when their doping began.  It also looks like doping in Germany pre-dates East Germany.  Going from 20 metals in 1932 to 89 in 1936 doesn't look like a natural progession.

i just can't believe he really believes russia would win as much medals with a population of 10 million as they would with china's population of 1.4 billion or something like that. if netherlands or australia would have 300 million population like usa i'm sure they would be the best or at least not worse.

@crissindahouse

That's  Great Text Wall of China here :D Not sure if it worth it?

@all

My point is pretty clear and ain't worth such vivid discussion, population matters but not in the way you think. There're more important things I mentioned above that might overcome a lot of circumstances. GDR is a good example. People may rant about dopings, but the fact that some GDR team members did use dopings, doesn't make them bad athletes. By your logic if GDR population is 1/4 of FRG population it should have scored only 2-3 gold medals in 1988 olympics? But they've scored 37! Thirty f**king seven with a population not being much bigger than modern Netherlands! 90% of gold medals couldn't be only due dopings, it's statistically impossible. Admit it, they were just better athletes than FRG athletes or modern Germany athletes. Germany decline as a sports nation since then, proves that population isn't a decisive factor.

Just need to big up all my Caribbean isles that did so well this Olympics, even if they didn't medal, they made to the finals a lot.
Special big up to Trinidad & Tobago for bringing home the first Gold in 36 years. Well done, Keshorn Walcott.