Lavellinie had it coming after he compared yesterday's booing in the most unacceptable fashion he could have thought of.

India is much poorer than China. Plus the only sport that Indians care for is cricket and a little bit of hockey. They don't try with anything else, and get almost no funding for other sports. 

I didn't know of the specific demographics of Germany. I was just comparing population sizes. But what you're saying makes sense. 

As for Russia, I agree with you. Some of their athletes (former Gold winners) weren't allowed to play, so perhaps that also lowered their potential total. 

Big guys lifting huge weights, in the weight lifting. Plenty of world records being set in weight lifting. Let's hope they are all clean athletes and legitimate records. Weightlifting does not get the same media attention as the track & field or swimming events.

Of course he apologized, what else could he do after such an offensive and ridiculous comparison? Na, I see this all a bit differently. Lavellenie is basically the current Bubka, the gold medal was already booked, the most dangerous contenders were basically already out when Lavellenie started the competition, and then he lost to a young contender who broke the Brazilian/South-American/Olympic record in this competition, something no one would have imagined. The defeat shocked Lavellenie. I have nothing against Lavellenie but I have a feeling he blames his defeat solely on the Brazilian fans and with that he can handily ignore the fact that da Silva beat him in an impressive fashion. Not only the fans made him nervous but also (and I think even more) da Silva's excellent performance. Others can handle the pressure (like the German womens team in beach volleyball semi final today against an - afaik - equally strong Brazilian team or the Swedish womens football team today against Marta), Lavellenie couldn't. Let's not forget: The two examples from womens sport also show that there's a lot of pressure on the Brazilian participants.

Actually some countries rank the teams by total medals. I guess it just depends on what makes your country look better. 

America loves to do this, but there is only 1 way to rank it and that's by gold medals. If its a tie it goes to silver. That's how the winner is decided in most if not all major sporting events.

Canada is doing pretty decent with 3 Golds

Surprised with the High Jump gold though

Well it's better than 2012 but still bad, especially because we participate in so many events. 

I know the winter olympics is our thing but I feel like we should still do way better and get at least 5 gold medals. 

I was hoping the women's football team would win Gold but they lost to Germany in the semi final . 

That was a big upset, was hoping they would be in the gold medal match

Winning Gold Medals is all that matters at the Olympic Games. An athlete is everything with a Gold medal and nothing without a Gold Medal. Some of the athletes winning Silver or Bronze medals look as disappointed as the last place finishers.