usa takes gold and silver in womens individual all around gymnastics final
1st nastia luikin
2nd shawn johnson

The second last post above mine reminds me of the following unwritten law: Always question the methods used by others, never your own.

If Michael Phelps was a country, he would be tied with South Korea, Italy and Japan for Gold medals. He should declare himself as an Independent state.

http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/athletics/story/2008/08/15/olympic-shot-put-final.html

Dylan Armstrong (Shot Put) missed getting Canada's first (Bronze) medal of the games by 1cm. He threw 21.04M and the guy who won the bonze 21.05M.

I think our rowing teams might get us something.

Has anyone else noticed we haven't heard the typical "You have to count medals per capita!" argument this time around? In the past that has always been the way people diminish the US medal count, I guess its not quite as applicable this year?

The argument became moot when Australia became a major player in the Summer Olympics despite their relative population.

EDIT: In Michael Phelpsia, the Gold medals per capita is 6!

Yeah Australia's third in overall medal count at the moment. Pretty amazing considering that second place, China has more than 65 times the population...
But if you do go by capita, Australia has 1 medal for every 1 million citizens :)

I just hate the way they rank the countries as is >_>
One country could have 8 gold, 0 silver and 0 bronze, while the country ranked one place below it could have 7 gold, 1000 silver and 10 000 000 bronze >_>

I always found that quite logic... Sounds almost like choosing a console for me, I always tried to pick up the one with the most great games =p. Who cares if it haves a lot of shovelware.

Ugh if Belgium had a population of 1.5 billion  then they still had 0 medals :(;

if we count weighted totals as Gold = 3, Silver = 2, Bronze = 1, then China is leading USA by 15 points, so a few more golds could drive that up. (currently china = 26G, 9S, 6B = 102 vs USA = 14G, 13S, 19B = 87)

I don't want to be a poor sport, and I seriously do congratulate the Chinese athletes on their victories, but I do wonder how many of these athletes are in a situation of "you get gold or at least beat USA, or you/your family will lose all the special privileges you've gotten as an athlete to represent us/will be billed and forced into debt to pay for all those special privileges you've gotten/sold/killed/ostracized from your community/etc.

I look at all the issues that are coming to light about that opening ceremony, and NBC even did an article about how chinese in the area have gone over all sorts of different "dos and do nots" for the "face" they want to show the world, and this even included not letting people wear the clothes they usually do. Literally, that's exactly what the news article stated, but they were spinning it as a completely positive and and welcomed "facelift" for the country, instead of what it really comes across as, which is a mandated MASK.

Taking all this into context, I honestly am worried for the Chinese athletes who don't do well. I am also wondering a bit how much home town "advantage" the chinese are getting, both in terms of government interference as well as polution factors.

Oh, and just for the heck of it:

Germany - 32, South Korea - 40, Italy - 30, Japan - 29, Australia - 37, Russia - 33, France - 32

(I only did the totals that had more than 10 medals total)

Canada still gets a participation medal though, right?

here we go, men 200m fly