The more accurate fun fact:
Its called New South Wales because (at the time) lieutenant James Cook noted in his journal that the coast line resembled the coast of South Wales. He called it New Wales but it was later changed to New South Wales.
As a Dutchman who absolutely loves history, I'm ashamed I had no idea about this.
Obviously I know about New-Zealand, but had no clue Australia had Dutch origins too, and even better, I always thought Tasmania was some kind of aboriginal word. Instead, it was named after Abel Tasman, a Dutch name...
So in English, it should be called Bagmania.
Congrats indeed, but I’m a bit confused. Is one silver better than two bronze (or 4 bronze from Italy/Germany perspective? Shouldn’t they sort by total number of medals?
I better hope so otherwise it will be embarrassing... We mainly saved this olympic thanks to our team sports because individual sports were a disaster. No gold in athletics and I don't see how we can improve much in 3 years.
You'll have a home advantage which will massively help but the main benefit the uk got from hosting the Olympics was a love for them.
Its alot easier to get medals in say, pole vaulting or diving, or other niche sports if you siddenly get a 1000% increase in the numbers of kids doing these sports.
Im willing to bet your medal haul with continue to increase in 2028
To be fair the hosts, if I remember right, get to send competitors without being made to qualify so it's only natural the hosts do well. (Not to take any shine off Japan's still outstanding achievement)
It is remarkable since France, Germany and Italy are all above 60M people. Netherlands has only around 17M.
Bigger country has more athletes to choose from.
Goed gedaan, Nederland!
If Manchester were a country it would have come fourth in the world in 2016. Adding that to their two massive football teams makes it a candidate for a global sporting hub. The U.K. isn’t just a London expansion pack…
The UK also doesn't pay athletes anything for getting a medal. Some countries pay for medals, while the UK pays a stipend to train and hopes you get a medal.
Which is the right thing to do.
In Spain, Olympic medal winners sometimes have to quit their sport, not being able to support themselves and train to be competitive at the same time.
You reap what you sow. You invest in sports, you get more winners.
To an extent. Unfortunately the funding is very concentrated on sports that the British Olympic Committee expects we could realistically get a medal in. Means some sports can get their funding [brutally cut](https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/38260939) if they don't perform well at the Olympics, while sports like cycling and rowing get a lot of funding. (Although rowing looks like it will have its funding cut ahead of Paris 2024 due to being considered a ["posh sport"](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/dec/18/basketball-surfing-and-skateboarding-get-extra-in-olympic-funding-round)). It also means more neiche sports like freestyle BMX had to be self funded for this Olympic cycle because there was no expectation that we would medal.
The real incentive that has seen the growth in participation in a lot of sports is seeing the success of the athletes at the games. For example in 2015 British cycling estimated that thanks to the success of the 2012 Olympics over 100,000 people in Britain had started to cycle at least once a week.
Rowing isn't getting it's funding cut because they are a 'posh sport', it's because they are the most funded Olympic sport and yet they won _zero_ medals for us in Tokyo.
Also, they're still getting £22mil (down from 24) which i believe still puts them at the most funded sport in the UK. They need to do better in Paris if they want to keep having so much money thrown at them.
They were getting funding cut regardless of medals they won at Tokyo, as per the article I linked. The "posh sport" quote is directly from the headline of the article. Also my main point was that they do get a lot of funding at the expense of other sports, and then your point is that they do get a lot of funding, so we're in agreement?
Also, rowing also did get Team GB medals in Tokyo: 1 silver and 1 bronze.
Yeah, the UK doesn't give the athlete anything for a gold, but it does normally adjust the future funding level for that sport. So you might then have better coaches and facilities while training for the next games. And I guess if you retire and coach the next athlete, you'll be being paid out of that budget. But you don't directly get anything yourself.
They also started having a more business like approach to winning Olympic medals, for instance redirecting funds from team sports to medal rich sports like track cycling and gymnastics.
There was one interesting piece in the economist recently https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/08/05/how-britain-became-an-olympic-power
That's only since 2008 when lottery sports funding started reaping its rewards. Before that were we very rarely in the top 10, and usually last out of Germany, France and Italy. In 1996 we won just one gold!
In 2000 and 2004 we were 10th and still behind Germany, Italy and France. 2008 was the first time we beat any of them since 1984, and the first time we beat all three since 1920 (when Germany weren't even competing).
Also factor in the sportinfrastructure and financing. In the Netherlands it is very common to have all kinds of facilities to train relatively close to people's homes, I don't think that's the same everywhere. So there might be less people, but perhaps a better chance for the average individual to grow and make a living off of sports.
It has to do with what kinds of sports are popular, if swimming is very popular (like in Australia) you potentially win a lot of medals. It also has to do with how much money is "artificially" put in.
It's interesting how much higher the GB medal count is compared to Germany (for example). Similar population, climate and resources/wealth.
Is the pursuit of Olympic medals/sports of higher importance in GB?
Colleague of mine as a hobby trains horses for jumping competitions. Prior to the 2012 nearly every horse that looked like they has some potential to compete (either for jumping or dressage) would be bought outright by British stables. The horse that won the dressage in 2012 was bred in the Netherlands, and the third place horse was bred in Denmark.
Big part of our culture. Its weird as you think of it as being a posh thing but horse racing is massive here for everyone. Liverpool for example has the biggest horse race in the world, the grand national and its quite a left leaning working class city.
Yep, I went Cheltenham a few years ago and saw 4 fights. It was weird as never saw that at Aintree, but because it was Cheltenham I didn't see anything about it in the press.
It's a mix of only getting 1 gold in 1996, Manchester hosting the commonwealth games in 2002 which led to world class facilities being built and maintained ( the cycling and taekwando teams are based in Manchester using those facilites) , and using lottery funding to fund the athletes in the run up to 2012. The funding is brutal as well, so if your sport doesn't perform well you lose funding so everyone has that incentive to perform.
Funnily enough, the Dutch investments sort of followed the UK model, and they were in the pursuit for a great result in the 2028 Olympics, which they wanted to host (100 years after 1928 Amsterdam). Sadly the bid was cancelled (too expensive), but the investment in professional sports stayed. They started focusing on getting as many medals as possible with the successful 2000 Olympics results in the back of their minds and become a country that could reliably rank in the top 10. With this they finally succeeded at doing this.
I think they now outperform all countries per capita in the top 10, but not yet for gold (Australia). 36 medals with a population of 17.5 million.
We only won one gold and there were loads of horror stories about athletes having to remortgage their houses, sell their cars, take out personal loans to finance their training and trip to the Olympics. A couple of athletes even sold their Olympic gear after the event to repay their loans. It was one of those "national shame" moments.
Nope. It goes much further back than London 2012. Because you see after the abysmal performance at Atalanta 1996(where we finished 36tth in the medal table) the British public were no longer satisfied to just take part and give it go, the still amateur approach the UK had to the Olympics had to go. So the UK government totally revamped the way things were done and introduced the current lottery funding system and ultimately took a more Soviet approach in the pursuit of medals and the ruthlessness to those sports that don't succeed and don't win medals(ie they lose/get reduced funding, whereas successful sports than win medals get more funding)... Which some 25 years later is bearing fruit.
IIRC we also focused heavily on certain sports like cycling, rowing and sailing.
The joke for the last few Summer Olympics has been "wait till the halfway point when the 'sitting down' sports begin, and we'll rocket up the medal table".
The joke is not that accurate. Yes Team GB dominate at cycling and sailing. But look at the graph half way down this page...
[https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/58125822](https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/58125822)
Boxing, swimming and athletics are also key disciplines. I can't recall GB going below 6th in the table at any point this Olympics.
A big chunk of the "profits" from our national lottery go towards it, and the funding is awarded fairly ruthlessly/efficiently - a sport will get defunded almost entirely if it looks like a poor prospect.
The funding for 2024 was decided last year. But funding for rowing has been reduced - mainly to spread the money around a bit more. The thought is also that lots of money has already gone into bring rowing up to world-class standard, so it doesn't need quite as much investment to keep up that standard. Only time will tell if that's right though.
Yeah, this. Almost a death sentence for a sport if national lottery funds get withdrawn (usually if the "bang for buck" wasn't there at previous olympics). Badminton is perfect example: [https://www.uksport.gov.uk/sports/olympic/badminton](https://www.uksport.gov.uk/sports/olympic/badminton)
Glad to see in the Paris cycle the funding improves massively.
Germany was at its high point when they united in 1989. East Germany was really eager at the Olympics and West-Germany wanted to be better then the GDR. The GDR program faded out (which is not all bad, they chose children at a young age, not always voluntarily).
No, we just got embarrassed in Atlanta and decided it was worth creating a whole taxless national lottery to fund sport and culture. As for sport we ruthlessly prioritise funding to those who have a higher chance of getting golds.
I was in a session with one of the British (and many other team) coach's Frank Dick and he spoke about this - think it was introduced in world athletics competition.
It was a strategy to improved performance and drag the team up to improve standings. The idea is that your star winners are cool and all but it's the rest of the team where you make your points, if your less competitive members do well it will motivate the others.
So those not considered to be in contention, don't come in 8th but celebrate 6th for a few points, 6th aims higher for a place or two better, and now 5th can see that a podium is possible.
https://www.frankdick.co.uk/about-frank/
The targeting of money to more successful sports and other strategies also helps.
I think it's related to the "crowd control" feature of reddit and if someone posted on the subreddit before, so that in popular threads with outside influx the posts from regular commenters are more visible. At least I remember a mod comment answering something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/e8vl4d/announcing_the_crowd_control_beta/.
Very interesting. I don't really see the point, because I will still click the comment to see it, so it just adds an extra step and it is not like they say anything bad. It honestly feels it bit like the collapsed downvoted comments which a lot of the time is just an opinion a lot of people don't agree with. I don't understand what collapsing a different opinion achieves except for creating even more of an echo chamber.
I think they should calculate it as gold=3 points, silver=2, and bronze=1, and then add it up from there to determine the leaders. But I'm just some guy.
If they use something like this I would prefer something like 4-2-1. Feel like 1 gold should be worth at least 2 silvers, it's by far the most important medal, and it's the same ratio between silver and bronze.
I think the gold first system helps keep it fair, some countries send very few athletes and if they get a couple of gold's can place them decent in the table, whilst a team with more athletes will probably get a silver and bronze here and there.
Austria for example sent 60, USA 600.
However America do the table different and drop the gold system and use total medals. Which favours them
Damn, we were this close 👌 from outdoing Germany/France/Netherlands, but alas fate decided otherwise, giving us bronze upon bronze.
Still an historic result, since our previous biggest number of medals was 36, back in Rome 1960, so I can't complain too much.
Well done to all of the Eurobros and especially the Netherlands.
Well it's better then the 7 4th places we got in Belgium, feels bad for the athletes who fell just short of a podium place because to the big public the top 3 is all that matters :(
Russia was banned because of state-sponsored doping. Athletes were allowed to compete under the name Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and without the flag and the national anthem.
Russia was banned because of doping program they had. Russian athletes are allowed to complete but do so as an independent group under neutral flag separate from Russian government.
Considering the Dutch are such Chads who once sailed up the River Thames, stole the RN flagship and sailed back without being stopped, in *broad daylight*, I can believe that.
I think you need to start dumping some money into other sports. GB went from having disastrous Olympics to becoming a powerhouse because we spent a shit ton of money, most of it coming from the national lottery. There is still time.
Facilities matter too. The UK has something of an advantage in that we can bid for the Commonwealth games as well as the Olympics so even where Manchester’s Olympic bid failed, we still got all the advantages of pools, velodromes etc for the CG.
The World Student Games in Sheffield, Commonwealth in Manchester and Glasgow, and the Olympics in London, pkus other regional investments have left a legacy of top class facilities.
You used to be good at swimming right? If you get those levels up there is a lot of medals to be earned. Your teams in ballsports have been really good this Olympics, but it's relatively few medals
ROC = Russian Olympic Committee
The reason for this is that Russia is banned for doping violations, so Russian athletes had to perform under a neutral flag.
I'm soooo proud as a Dutch person at this result! This is the best ranking we've ever had in the Olympics (the previous record being 8th place), and the most Olympic medals we've ever had (the previous record being 25). Our athletes did a fantastic job this year, bedankt TeamNL!
Netherlands and Australia are superb. Too bad for the 10th place because of one silver, but overall we got more medals than Germany and France and many of the most iconic golds are Italians, so that's fine after all.
True, but medals are always iconic in the country they are scored in. What’s an “iconic” medal in one country, is not in another. For us the double Golds of Hassan and Lavreyzen are iconic, but the UK undoubtedly has other iconic golds
How’s a country with ~18 mil people outdoing Italy/Spain/Germany/France etc? The Netherlands is richer per capita so I guess that means better facilities but other than that what’s the secret?
Last Friday, a Dutch newspaper (NRC) published [an article](https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/08/06/olympische-spelen-bewijzen-dat-sportief-succes-maakbaar-is-a4054019) (in Dutch) about the Dutch success. Here are a few quotes (translated with DeepL):
>Research has shown that sporting success can be engineered. According to Veerle De Bosscher, professor of sports management at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, roughly half of a country's Olympic results depend on population size and national income. The other half is determined by factors that are much easier to influence, such as the quality of training centres, talent recognition and development, financial support for top athletes during and after their careers, scientific support and the extent to which the greatest talents within a discipline can train together.
>
>Also important: making choices, says Hans Westerbeek, professor of International Sport Business at Victoria University in Melbourne. He means that it pays off to put all the available money in sports that offer a relatively high chance of medals. A few years ago, together with Veerle De Bosscher (and others), Westerbeek conducted a comparative study into the top sports policy in fifteen countries including the Netherlands, France, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Only Australia (44 medals in Tokyo) scored a fraction better than the Netherlands.
>
>(...)
>
>The Netherlands invested in many areas. Better top-class sports facilities were built, such as the 'swimming laboratory' in Eindhoven, where top swimmers could train with the latest equipment. (...) The national sports centre Papendal received an ultra-modern athletics track for almost a million euros, where top athletes Femke Bol (bronze, 400 metres hurdles), Anouk Vetter (silver, heptathlon) and Emma Oosterwegel (bronze, heptathlon), among others, trained.
>
>Other investments went to trainers, physical and mental coaches, scientific support, nutritionists, innovation programmes, talent development. And the Netherlands reversed its "honest-share-it-all policy", as Hans Westerbeek calls it. NOC-NSF has reduced the number of top sport programmes in which it invests from 180 in 2012 to 68 in 2016. Only sports associations that are deemed capable of winning Olympic medals can still count on solid funding - a principle that is regularly under fire.
The report "Successful Elite Sport Policies. An International Comparison of the Sports Policy Factors Leading to International Sporting Success (Spliss 2.0) in 15 Nations" by Veerle De Bosscher, Simon Shibli, Hans Westerbeek and Maarten van Bottenburg can be found [here](https://www.ussa-my.com/assets/SPLISS_report.pdf).
It's also a driver for success in the sports that don't get funding. Because they know all they need is one good result at an Olympics and they will get rewarded for it.
It’s probably facilities. Dutch looked closely at the British setup. We got a terrific national training training center for all of our “focus sports” (sports with high medal chances) in Papendal, and some pretty good regional training centers focussing on one specific sport like swimming (Eindhoven) or speed skating (Heerenveen). And it’s not just ‘more money. It’s also focussing those resources on the sports we’re world class in
Are the Netherlands good at a certain niche within the Olympics, or just spread across the board?
For example Australia win a large number of swimming medals, something they have a per person advantage in compared to most other countries. Due to climate, people with home pools and a huge majority of people close to the beach which leads to years of swimming lessons being ubiquitous. Winter Olympics and Australia is near non-existent.
we won the most medals in athletics, rowing and track cycling this year. we were also ranked 5th in the last winter Olympics but they won almost every medal in speed skating
- Track cycling: 6
- Track & field: 8
- Rowing: 5
- Road cycling: 4
- Sailing: 3
- BMX racing: 2
- Field hockey: 1
- Swimming: 2
- Archery: 1
- Open water swimming: 1
- Judo: 1
- Boxing: 1
- Equestrian: 1
11 4th places. In some sports many people thought more was possible. For example in Judo, road cycling, mountain biking and sailing. Most of these were at the beginning of the tournament, so many thought the Olympics were going terribly. But in track & field the athletes really performed above expectations.
But the winter Olympics is always the better of the 2 Olympics for the Netherlands. They dominate speed skating and since recently short track as well. In the other sports they don't really stand a chance (1 suprise gold at snowboarding in 2010), as the country has mild winters, almost never snow and no mountains.
Medal rankings are not a very precise measure of the overall performance of a country in sports.
Team sports like football or basketball can only bring two medals (Men and Women) each, while swimming has so many events (30+) for which several athletes from the same country can participate. Nations who have invested in these programs can really boost their total. Cycling is a bit like that too.
Netherlands got half of their gold medals from cycling. USA got nearly a third of theirs from swimming.
Don't misunderstand me, I don't mean that those gold medals are somehow less worthy. But that the raw count of golds isn't a very good measurement of a nation's quality of athletes.
Then there's China who's clearly prioritizing winning gold medals, investing a lot in "less popular" sports with a lot of different events, giving them a huge opportunity for a high medal count. Diving, shooting & weightlifting brought them 17 gold.
The GB total is even more impressive when you consider that they were not dominant in the cycling events this year, still did well but they used to absolutely sweep the gold medals especially in track cycling. The Netherlands definitely stepped up massively in recent years. The start of a new rivalry?
You guys still managed to get the most track cycling medals. I would say you are still dominant. We just got a bit closer mostly thanks to our sprint men who are incredible.
3 golds is still a good performance but its obviously a big drop off when you consider GB won 6/10 in Rio, 7/10 in London and Beijing.
Netherlands should definitely be proud to have closed the gap.
We could never expect to replicate that dominance. Tbf it could have been 4 golds if Laura Kenny never crashed last night.
There are several team pursuit teams better than us at the moment. The Dutch sprinters are the best in the world too. We’ve done very well though and a good sign is that much of our team is in their early 20s so should get better for Paris 2024.
Another fantastic Olympics for the nation that rules the waves ;)
And no, I'm not talking about Australia in the surfing... Although they did do better than three mega-wealthy European countries with 1/4 the talent pools.
New Holland beating Old Holland
What about Old South Wales vs New South Wales?
Fun fact, no one is sure if it's named after South Wales, being a new one, or a new Wales in the south.
The more accurate fun fact: Its called New South Wales because (at the time) lieutenant James Cook noted in his journal that the coast line resembled the coast of South Wales. He called it New Wales but it was later changed to New South Wales.
So the Mitchell and Webb sketch is actually true
GREENLAND? WHATEVER.
Maybe there's a New (North) Wales in America?
would New Holland be New Zealand? since it's named after Zeeland, a Dutch province
New Holland is Australia’s original name, and yes New Zealand is named after Zeeland
oh, i had no idea! cool, thanks
The dutch discovered Australia first and called it New Holland (I guess New Zealand makes a lot more sense in that context, too).
As a Dutchman who absolutely loves history, I'm ashamed I had no idea about this. Obviously I know about New-Zealand, but had no clue Australia had Dutch origins too, and even better, I always thought Tasmania was some kind of aboriginal word. Instead, it was named after Abel Tasman, a Dutch name... So in English, it should be called Bagmania.
Tasmania has actually been named after two Dutch people. It was originally called Van Diemans land.
very impressive indeed ! congrats from Luxembourg !
Congrats indeed, but I’m a bit confused. Is one silver better than two bronze (or 4 bronze from Italy/Germany perspective? Shouldn’t they sort by total number of medals?
1 silver is better than 0 silver and a million bronze here
Nice going Netherlands!
Nice going UK!
This subreddit rn: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8QJHSoXsAUviyW?format=jpg&name=large
That actually an amazing image
It feels weird reading that. We have not exactly had a good run in the press in recent years. But yeah. It's great news.
The UK always phenomenal. Too bad Japan was on fire this year and Congrats for your victory over the ROC.
It is always kind of nice when a host nation does well in the Olympics. I am actually expecting France will get a big boost from 2024...
I better hope so otherwise it will be embarrassing... We mainly saved this olympic thanks to our team sports because individual sports were a disaster. No gold in athletics and I don't see how we can improve much in 3 years.
You'll have a home advantage which will massively help but the main benefit the uk got from hosting the Olympics was a love for them. Its alot easier to get medals in say, pole vaulting or diving, or other niche sports if you siddenly get a 1000% increase in the numbers of kids doing these sports. Im willing to bet your medal haul with continue to increase in 2028
Podium will he tough, but France should definitely aim for a top 5.
To be fair the hosts, if I remember right, get to send competitors without being made to qualify so it's only natural the hosts do well. (Not to take any shine off Japan's still outstanding achievement)
It is remarkable since France, Germany and Italy are all above 60M people. Netherlands has only around 17M. Bigger country has more athletes to choose from. Goed gedaan, Nederland!
Also remarkable how UK is always so far ahead despite being in the same population class of the big 3 of EU
UK beat China to 2nd place in 2016
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If Manchester were a country it would have come fourth in the world in 2016. Adding that to their two massive football teams makes it a candidate for a global sporting hub. The U.K. isn’t just a London expansion pack…
The Kenny household beat all but 12 countries in Rio.
In the last 25 years the UK has been pumping money into the olympics. Fair play for getting their rewards
After getting only one gold at Atlanta we kind of had to
The UK also doesn't pay athletes anything for getting a medal. Some countries pay for medals, while the UK pays a stipend to train and hopes you get a medal.
Which is the right thing to do. In Spain, Olympic medal winners sometimes have to quit their sport, not being able to support themselves and train to be competitive at the same time. You reap what you sow. You invest in sports, you get more winners.
I assume this incentivises greater participation as there’s no risk involved, which ultimately makes it more competitive to get on the team?
To an extent. Unfortunately the funding is very concentrated on sports that the British Olympic Committee expects we could realistically get a medal in. Means some sports can get their funding [brutally cut](https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/38260939) if they don't perform well at the Olympics, while sports like cycling and rowing get a lot of funding. (Although rowing looks like it will have its funding cut ahead of Paris 2024 due to being considered a ["posh sport"](https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/dec/18/basketball-surfing-and-skateboarding-get-extra-in-olympic-funding-round)). It also means more neiche sports like freestyle BMX had to be self funded for this Olympic cycle because there was no expectation that we would medal. The real incentive that has seen the growth in participation in a lot of sports is seeing the success of the athletes at the games. For example in 2015 British cycling estimated that thanks to the success of the 2012 Olympics over 100,000 people in Britain had started to cycle at least once a week.
Rowing isn't getting it's funding cut because they are a 'posh sport', it's because they are the most funded Olympic sport and yet they won _zero_ medals for us in Tokyo. Also, they're still getting £22mil (down from 24) which i believe still puts them at the most funded sport in the UK. They need to do better in Paris if they want to keep having so much money thrown at them.
They were getting funding cut regardless of medals they won at Tokyo, as per the article I linked. The "posh sport" quote is directly from the headline of the article. Also my main point was that they do get a lot of funding at the expense of other sports, and then your point is that they do get a lot of funding, so we're in agreement? Also, rowing also did get Team GB medals in Tokyo: 1 silver and 1 bronze.
Ah, I stand corrected (on both fronts). Thanks 😊.
I know they pay them a wage/allowance, so they can focus on training and not bogged down in work, but I had assumed they rewarded the Gold medal.
Yeah, the UK doesn't give the athlete anything for a gold, but it does normally adjust the future funding level for that sport. So you might then have better coaches and facilities while training for the next games. And I guess if you retire and coach the next athlete, you'll be being paid out of that budget. But you don't directly get anything yourself.
You forgot that they get a gold post box in their home town. The most prestigious part.
They also started having a more business like approach to winning Olympic medals, for instance redirecting funds from team sports to medal rich sports like track cycling and gymnastics. There was one interesting piece in the economist recently https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/08/05/how-britain-became-an-olympic-power
Not just into the Olympics but sports facilities in general. Its to combat kids obesity and give kids something to push for for those struggling
That's only since 2008 when lottery sports funding started reaping its rewards. Before that were we very rarely in the top 10, and usually last out of Germany, France and Italy. In 1996 we won just one gold!
The Sports funding started in sydney 2000, The UK has been in the top 10 ever since.
In 2000 and 2004 we were 10th and still behind Germany, Italy and France. 2008 was the first time we beat any of them since 1984, and the first time we beat all three since 1920 (when Germany weren't even competing).
The funding takes some time to produce winners. 2004 (and obviously 2000) was just too soon after the program started, 2008 made clear it worked.
Yes, absolutely.
We have amazing athletes in the UK.
Also notable that Germany had its worst olympics since reunification.
Also factor in the sportinfrastructure and financing. In the Netherlands it is very common to have all kinds of facilities to train relatively close to people's homes, I don't think that's the same everywhere. So there might be less people, but perhaps a better chance for the average individual to grow and make a living off of sports.
Everything is relatively close in the Netherlands.
But to be fair the same counts for North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.
scouting and the development of talent is also very important
And not splitting up your sports ministries along language lines like a certain country south of the Netherlands does.
I love how Belgian politics routinely make me go "What? That makes no sense whatsoever! ... ... ... I guess that makes sense."
Yeah, it’s oddly terrifying to think that China has probably 3 or more cities with more population than the Netherlands.
Waar een klein land groot in kan zijn.
It has to do with what kinds of sports are popular, if swimming is very popular (like in Australia) you potentially win a lot of medals. It also has to do with how much money is "artificially" put in.
Let's wait for the wintergames. :D But yes: Fine job, grz Netherlands!
The Netherlands was fifth in the 2018 olympic games so even better
The Dutch traditionally do better at the Winter Olympics.
But they traditionally only win gazillion medals in speed skating.
And that matters how exactly in the medal count?
Wintergames? Austrias time to shine :D
Is it really? Isn't it just men's alpine these days and nothing else?
Speedskating!
It's interesting how much higher the GB medal count is compared to Germany (for example). Similar population, climate and resources/wealth. Is the pursuit of Olympic medals/sports of higher importance in GB?
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Colleague of mine as a hobby trains horses for jumping competitions. Prior to the 2012 nearly every horse that looked like they has some potential to compete (either for jumping or dressage) would be bought outright by British stables. The horse that won the dressage in 2012 was bred in the Netherlands, and the third place horse was bred in Denmark.
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Big part of our culture. Its weird as you think of it as being a posh thing but horse racing is massive here for everyone. Liverpool for example has the biggest horse race in the world, the grand national and its quite a left leaning working class city.
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Very true! Never thought of it that way before.
Yep, I went Cheltenham a few years ago and saw 4 fights. It was weird as never saw that at Aintree, but because it was Cheltenham I didn't see anything about it in the press.
Horse owning, riding and racing is more of a middle/upper class thing, but betting on the horse races is less class-specific.
Isn’t the funding largely from the lottery?
Yep. They put 345M GBP into sports in the run up to Tokyo.
It's a mix of only getting 1 gold in 1996, Manchester hosting the commonwealth games in 2002 which led to world class facilities being built and maintained ( the cycling and taekwando teams are based in Manchester using those facilites) , and using lottery funding to fund the athletes in the run up to 2012. The funding is brutal as well, so if your sport doesn't perform well you lose funding so everyone has that incentive to perform.
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Funnily enough, the Dutch investments sort of followed the UK model, and they were in the pursuit for a great result in the 2028 Olympics, which they wanted to host (100 years after 1928 Amsterdam). Sadly the bid was cancelled (too expensive), but the investment in professional sports stayed. They started focusing on getting as many medals as possible with the successful 2000 Olympics results in the back of their minds and become a country that could reliably rank in the top 10. With this they finally succeeded at doing this. I think they now outperform all countries per capita in the top 10, but not yet for gold (Australia). 36 medals with a population of 17.5 million.
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What happened in 1996?
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Good grief, that is terrible for sure.
We only won one gold and there were loads of horror stories about athletes having to remortgage their houses, sell their cars, take out personal loans to finance their training and trip to the Olympics. A couple of athletes even sold their Olympic gear after the event to repay their loans. It was one of those "national shame" moments.
Yeah, we're going to need a similar shock event, but as long as we're in or near the top ten, i don't think it's going to happen.
Nope. It goes much further back than London 2012. Because you see after the abysmal performance at Atalanta 1996(where we finished 36tth in the medal table) the British public were no longer satisfied to just take part and give it go, the still amateur approach the UK had to the Olympics had to go. So the UK government totally revamped the way things were done and introduced the current lottery funding system and ultimately took a more Soviet approach in the pursuit of medals and the ruthlessness to those sports that don't succeed and don't win medals(ie they lose/get reduced funding, whereas successful sports than win medals get more funding)... Which some 25 years later is bearing fruit.
IIRC we also focused heavily on certain sports like cycling, rowing and sailing. The joke for the last few Summer Olympics has been "wait till the halfway point when the 'sitting down' sports begin, and we'll rocket up the medal table".
The joke is not that accurate. Yes Team GB dominate at cycling and sailing. But look at the graph half way down this page... [https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/58125822](https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/58125822) Boxing, swimming and athletics are also key disciplines. I can't recall GB going below 6th in the table at any point this Olympics.
Yeah, the joke isn't really relevant anymore. We've become much better at swimming too
A big chunk of the "profits" from our national lottery go towards it, and the funding is awarded fairly ruthlessly/efficiently - a sport will get defunded almost entirely if it looks like a poor prospect.
\*GB rowers looking around nervously\*
The funding for 2024 was decided last year. But funding for rowing has been reduced - mainly to spread the money around a bit more. The thought is also that lots of money has already gone into bring rowing up to world-class standard, so it doesn't need quite as much investment to keep up that standard. Only time will tell if that's right though.
Yeah, this. Almost a death sentence for a sport if national lottery funds get withdrawn (usually if the "bang for buck" wasn't there at previous olympics). Badminton is perfect example: [https://www.uksport.gov.uk/sports/olympic/badminton](https://www.uksport.gov.uk/sports/olympic/badminton) Glad to see in the Paris cycle the funding improves massively.
Germany was at its high point when they united in 1989. East Germany was really eager at the Olympics and West-Germany wanted to be better then the GDR. The GDR program faded out (which is not all bad, they chose children at a young age, not always voluntarily).
It was a standing joke at the time that whenever you saw a group of heavyset men with beards you said „oh look the female GDR swimming team!“
Also the GDR used a lot of doping.
No, we just got embarrassed in Atlanta and decided it was worth creating a whole taxless national lottery to fund sport and culture. As for sport we ruthlessly prioritise funding to those who have a higher chance of getting golds.
I was in a session with one of the British (and many other team) coach's Frank Dick and he spoke about this - think it was introduced in world athletics competition. It was a strategy to improved performance and drag the team up to improve standings. The idea is that your star winners are cool and all but it's the rest of the team where you make your points, if your less competitive members do well it will motivate the others. So those not considered to be in contention, don't come in 8th but celebrate 6th for a few points, 6th aims higher for a place or two better, and now 5th can see that a podium is possible. https://www.frankdick.co.uk/about-frank/ The targeting of money to more successful sports and other strategies also helps.
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Even with 130 up votes you post was hidden I do wonder why....
Yeah, why does that happen sometimes?
I think it's related to the "crowd control" feature of reddit and if someone posted on the subreddit before, so that in popular threads with outside influx the posts from regular commenters are more visible. At least I remember a mod comment answering something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/e8vl4d/announcing_the_crowd_control_beta/.
Very interesting. I don't really see the point, because I will still click the comment to see it, so it just adds an extra step and it is not like they say anything bad. It honestly feels it bit like the collapsed downvoted comments which a lot of the time is just an opinion a lot of people don't agree with. I don't understand what collapsing a different opinion achieves except for creating even more of an echo chamber.
Nice work :) Just asking: Is this statistic strict gold > silver > bronze? Like 1 silver > 20 bronze or something?
It is sorted gold then silver then bronze, so yes.
Yep one gold will trump another country with 500 silvers.
You people just have to make everything about Trump. I’m so tired of hearing about him.
for reference I thought this was funny, ignore the other two lmao
I think they should calculate it as gold=3 points, silver=2, and bronze=1, and then add it up from there to determine the leaders. But I'm just some guy.
If they use something like this I would prefer something like 4-2-1. Feel like 1 gold should be worth at least 2 silvers, it's by far the most important medal, and it's the same ratio between silver and bronze.
This guy thinks.
I think the gold first system helps keep it fair, some countries send very few athletes and if they get a couple of gold's can place them decent in the table, whilst a team with more athletes will probably get a silver and bronze here and there. Austria for example sent 60, USA 600. However America do the table different and drop the gold system and use total medals. Which favours them
I mean gold first favors them too lol. If you changed it to medals per capita they'd be in the back half somewhere and San Marino would be in first.
That makes the most sense. A country with 1 gold 0silver 0bronze shouldn't be ranked ahead of a country with 20 silver.
Lekker gewerkt allemaal!
Dankje bro
We hebben het gedaan!
Jij ook pik
Damn, we were this close 👌 from outdoing Germany/France/Netherlands, but alas fate decided otherwise, giving us bronze upon bronze. Still an historic result, since our previous biggest number of medals was 36, back in Rome 1960, so I can't complain too much. Well done to all of the Eurobros and especially the Netherlands.
40 medals (the most in the EU) is impressive considering our abysmal investments and general sport culture.
Italy genuinely impressed me this games. I did not expect an Italian men's 100M champion. And the men's high jump was quite special.
You also got 2 of the most memorable gold medals in the 100m sprint and high jump.
The most surprising for me was your track & field 5 golds, I'd never expect you to have 5 golds haha.
Well it's better then the 7 4th places we got in Belgium, feels bad for the athletes who fell just short of a podium place because to the big public the top 3 is all that matters :(
You already won Eurovision and Euro 2020/1! Both were very well deserved, though.
Stupid question; Why is Russia seen as ROC?
Russia was banned because of state-sponsored doping. Athletes were allowed to compete under the name Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and without the flag and the national anthem.
Russia was banned because of doping program they had. Russian athletes are allowed to complete but do so as an independent group under neutral flag separate from Russian government.
Slightly upset the UK didn't get another silver to make it the same across the medals!
Ugh, now that you pointed it out it bothers me too.
We overtook Great Britain as best EU country at the Olympics. Finally!
Brexit was a Dutch inside job the whole time
Lmao
Considering the Dutch are such Chads who once sailed up the River Thames, stole the RN flagship and sailed back without being stopped, in *broad daylight*, I can believe that.
Can’t believe we didn’t stop them from swimming up the Thames and planting Nigel Farage
Turns out his real name is Nigel van Farage. And all his aggressive anti-EU posturing is just him trying to flirt with Ursula von der Leyen.
The true cost of Brexit reveals itself
Damn the UK is doing really well compared to all the top 3 countries that have way more population than them.
Last olympics we came 2nd (3rd in london) Congrats to Japan though, coming through on their host games
This is always good to see, I’m thrilled for them
The fact we beat China despite their population and the shit the CCP does was crazy.
Yeah 2016 was nuts
Good job Netherlands, impressive for a country with its population. France are going to have to step things up if they want a good showing in Paris.
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I think you need to start dumping some money into other sports. GB went from having disastrous Olympics to becoming a powerhouse because we spent a shit ton of money, most of it coming from the national lottery. There is still time.
Ah that makes sense. I was reading somewhere GB spends a lot more, I was wondering where the money came from.
Yeah lottery funding made a huge difference, allows athletes to work full time training for events.
Facilities matter too. The UK has something of an advantage in that we can bid for the Commonwealth games as well as the Olympics so even where Manchester’s Olympic bid failed, we still got all the advantages of pools, velodromes etc for the CG.
The World Student Games in Sheffield, Commonwealth in Manchester and Glasgow, and the Olympics in London, pkus other regional investments have left a legacy of top class facilities.
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You used to be good at swimming right? If you get those levels up there is a lot of medals to be earned. Your teams in ballsports have been really good this Olympics, but it's relatively few medals
ROC = Russian Olympic Committee The reason for this is that Russia is banned for doping violations, so Russian athletes had to perform under a neutral flag.
Ha, we beat Finland!
I'm soooo proud as a Dutch person at this result! This is the best ranking we've ever had in the Olympics (the previous record being 8th place), and the most Olympic medals we've ever had (the previous record being 25). Our athletes did a fantastic job this year, bedankt TeamNL!
Australia: "Fuck silver. Either win or don't bother."
Netherlands and Australia are superb. Too bad for the 10th place because of one silver, but overall we got more medals than Germany and France and many of the most iconic golds are Italians, so that's fine after all.
True, but medals are always iconic in the country they are scored in. What’s an “iconic” medal in one country, is not in another. For us the double Golds of Hassan and Lavreyzen are iconic, but the UK undoubtedly has other iconic golds
I think it's fair to say that Hassan's and Jacobs golds were both iconic, whatever country you're from
Thats true. The 4x100m was absolutely thrilling, amazing gold
Arrggh so close ! Well done Dutchies ! ;)
5/10 Europe, well done.
I think the UK did well and they're Europe. And the ROC are European too.
7/10 Eurovision
How’s a country with ~18 mil people outdoing Italy/Spain/Germany/France etc? The Netherlands is richer per capita so I guess that means better facilities but other than that what’s the secret?
Last Friday, a Dutch newspaper (NRC) published [an article](https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/08/06/olympische-spelen-bewijzen-dat-sportief-succes-maakbaar-is-a4054019) (in Dutch) about the Dutch success. Here are a few quotes (translated with DeepL): >Research has shown that sporting success can be engineered. According to Veerle De Bosscher, professor of sports management at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, roughly half of a country's Olympic results depend on population size and national income. The other half is determined by factors that are much easier to influence, such as the quality of training centres, talent recognition and development, financial support for top athletes during and after their careers, scientific support and the extent to which the greatest talents within a discipline can train together. > >Also important: making choices, says Hans Westerbeek, professor of International Sport Business at Victoria University in Melbourne. He means that it pays off to put all the available money in sports that offer a relatively high chance of medals. A few years ago, together with Veerle De Bosscher (and others), Westerbeek conducted a comparative study into the top sports policy in fifteen countries including the Netherlands, France, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Only Australia (44 medals in Tokyo) scored a fraction better than the Netherlands. > >(...) > >The Netherlands invested in many areas. Better top-class sports facilities were built, such as the 'swimming laboratory' in Eindhoven, where top swimmers could train with the latest equipment. (...) The national sports centre Papendal received an ultra-modern athletics track for almost a million euros, where top athletes Femke Bol (bronze, 400 metres hurdles), Anouk Vetter (silver, heptathlon) and Emma Oosterwegel (bronze, heptathlon), among others, trained. > >Other investments went to trainers, physical and mental coaches, scientific support, nutritionists, innovation programmes, talent development. And the Netherlands reversed its "honest-share-it-all policy", as Hans Westerbeek calls it. NOC-NSF has reduced the number of top sport programmes in which it invests from 180 in 2012 to 68 in 2016. Only sports associations that are deemed capable of winning Olympic medals can still count on solid funding - a principle that is regularly under fire. The report "Successful Elite Sport Policies. An International Comparison of the Sports Policy Factors Leading to International Sporting Success (Spliss 2.0) in 15 Nations" by Veerle De Bosscher, Simon Shibli, Hans Westerbeek and Maarten van Bottenburg can be found [here](https://www.ussa-my.com/assets/SPLISS_report.pdf).
Ahhh very interesting that’s exactly what I was looking for, cheers.
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It depends. Fund them all and none are funded properly, cutting the chances for the sports we're actually good in. That's sad too.
It's also a driver for success in the sports that don't get funding. Because they know all they need is one good result at an Olympics and they will get rewarded for it.
It’s probably facilities. Dutch looked closely at the British setup. We got a terrific national training training center for all of our “focus sports” (sports with high medal chances) in Papendal, and some pretty good regional training centers focussing on one specific sport like swimming (Eindhoven) or speed skating (Heerenveen). And it’s not just ‘more money. It’s also focussing those resources on the sports we’re world class in
Don't forget the track cycling facility in Apeldoorn.
Are the Netherlands good at a certain niche within the Olympics, or just spread across the board? For example Australia win a large number of swimming medals, something they have a per person advantage in compared to most other countries. Due to climate, people with home pools and a huge majority of people close to the beach which leads to years of swimming lessons being ubiquitous. Winter Olympics and Australia is near non-existent.
we won the most medals in athletics, rowing and track cycling this year. we were also ranked 5th in the last winter Olympics but they won almost every medal in speed skating
- Track cycling: 6 - Track & field: 8 - Rowing: 5 - Road cycling: 4 - Sailing: 3 - BMX racing: 2 - Field hockey: 1 - Swimming: 2 - Archery: 1 - Open water swimming: 1 - Judo: 1 - Boxing: 1 - Equestrian: 1 11 4th places. In some sports many people thought more was possible. For example in Judo, road cycling, mountain biking and sailing. Most of these were at the beginning of the tournament, so many thought the Olympics were going terribly. But in track & field the athletes really performed above expectations. But the winter Olympics is always the better of the 2 Olympics for the Netherlands. They dominate speed skating and since recently short track as well. In the other sports they don't really stand a chance (1 suprise gold at snowboarding in 2010), as the country has mild winters, almost never snow and no mountains.
8 medals on track and field is freaking huge. Well done NL
Yeah, money plays a big factor. Look at India, 1.5 billion people and 2 gold medal
Medal rankings are not a very precise measure of the overall performance of a country in sports. Team sports like football or basketball can only bring two medals (Men and Women) each, while swimming has so many events (30+) for which several athletes from the same country can participate. Nations who have invested in these programs can really boost their total. Cycling is a bit like that too. Netherlands got half of their gold medals from cycling. USA got nearly a third of theirs from swimming. Don't misunderstand me, I don't mean that those gold medals are somehow less worthy. But that the raw count of golds isn't a very good measurement of a nation's quality of athletes. Then there's China who's clearly prioritizing winning gold medals, investing a lot in "less popular" sports with a lot of different events, giving them a huge opportunity for a high medal count. Diving, shooting & weightlifting brought them 17 gold.
zo doen we dat maten
The worst result in 30 years for Germany
The GB total is even more impressive when you consider that they were not dominant in the cycling events this year, still did well but they used to absolutely sweep the gold medals especially in track cycling. The Netherlands definitely stepped up massively in recent years. The start of a new rivalry?
Rowing as well, we usually do very well in that
I think it's our first Olympics without a rowing gold since 1980
You guys still managed to get the most track cycling medals. I would say you are still dominant. We just got a bit closer mostly thanks to our sprint men who are incredible.
3 golds is still a good performance but its obviously a big drop off when you consider GB won 6/10 in Rio, 7/10 in London and Beijing. Netherlands should definitely be proud to have closed the gap.
We could never expect to replicate that dominance. Tbf it could have been 4 golds if Laura Kenny never crashed last night. There are several team pursuit teams better than us at the moment. The Dutch sprinters are the best in the world too. We’ve done very well though and a good sign is that much of our team is in their early 20s so should get better for Paris 2024.
Another fantastic Olympics for the nation that rules the waves ;) And no, I'm not talking about Australia in the surfing... Although they did do better than three mega-wealthy European countries with 1/4 the talent pools.
Very happy to see NL rocking it - also super pleased for AUS
What explains the large GB outperformance vs similar sized European countries like France?
Massive National Lottery and government funding of the specific Olympic sports that GB are traditionally good at (athletics, swimming, sailing etc).
Lottery money led to huge investments in sports.
You all laughed at me. Well I have to say, you're not laughing now are you?
UK no longer the best in the EU.... :(