Japan won 38 medal compared to just 25 medal in 2008 but less gold medals (9 vs 7).

@mai

it's just not true... if you have 100 good sportman who could place 2., 8,, 20. and whatever against the whole planet in any sport and you give them the worst dope possible (that's what athletes even say who used it can't you accept that?) then yes, they will place first, second, third lol.

no one is saying they didn't do much for sports in gdr, who is saying that? didn't i even say that they loved to waste money for that instead of using it to really help the people living in the gdr with investments in more important areas? i just say that they would have won much much less medals, maybe 10 gold or so which is still impressive.

but great that you don't talk about all the points i mentioned like the soviet russian example and the countries of that from nowadays, just ignore it and still believe russia would win almost the same medals with chinas size or netherlands size of population with only a small difference to what they win nowadays if it makes you happy and let you dream that russia is much better than all except china and usa just because they are so much better in sport. if you really believe that usa is doing more for sports compared to some smaller developed countries you are simply wrong. 5x as much facilities with 20x as uch people doesn't mean they do more for everyone on average, just that they have more facilities in general.

and you always mention germany's decline, why do you even mention that all the time? did someone ever say that germany had no decline? yes they have one in summer olympics, they have a much smaller population between 18-35 years (as potential athletes) than they had 20 years ago (usa should have even more in that age than they had 20-30 years ago) and germany has the lowest birth rate, that even proves that population matters if exactly the country with the biggest decline in births has the biggest decline in sport success. and the system isn't as good as it was some time ago, we all now that here and i think we waste really too much for football instead of putting more in other sports. but how does this change anything about usa, china and russia? how often shall i say that you see with greece and uk that investments push your success but greece could still never be as good as usa because even if they would invest 10x as much per capita as usa they would invest still less overall and would still have much less potential athletes in the population.

Yea, F you China! We won.

I hate China, last Olympics they cheated. They should have been omitted from the games all together (one full cycle, Summer and Winter games). I hate cheaters period. It was so far that the made fake documents and such. I just can't believe how little the games cares about such a BS act. Because of their cheating ways, I hate China, and wish them to do bad at every Olympic games from here on out. I despise cheaters, and that a nation did it, it's quite embarrassing.

it was horrible to see the 12 years old girls in gymnastics. now 4 years later they were in gb and still were only little girls and that 4 years later lol.

It's pretty much been proven that all of East Germany's metals in swimming and track and field are a result of heavy doping you want to see the real metal count for East Germany for the 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1988 then subtract all the swimming and track and field metals.  Again Germany's history of doping in sports most likely began in the 1936 Olympics you don't go from 20 to 89 total metals even though you sent a little more then three times as much athlets to the 1936 games compared to 1932.  My guess is that at least 20 of those 1936 German Olympic metals involved some kind of doping.

Seems like things have settled down a bit, so here's a list of British winners, and losers, at the games:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/olympics/19226042

Some odd stats:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19166071

And to end the whole Medals dispute once and for all!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19249898

looking forward to the 2016 Olympics as I actually might have a shot on going!!!

also just add in...I hope the NBA/FIBA doesn't imply that 23 and under rule for future olympics for the USA....it pure utter BS.

Which rule is this? Don't think I've heard about it...

well it's not official as it's still in the works, but rumor has it  to  protect their players from injury while they age, and to the fact that they aren't getting any revenue from NBA players playing in the Olympics NBA owners want to limit the participating players to 23, or make the roster 6 NBA players and 6 college players

Seems like a silly rule if you ask me...but I'm not really 'in-tune' with Basketball...

People always seem surprised when I tell them that next to no-one in the UK knows about the sport. Hopefully the Olympics changed that.