tense in the road race!
Bit of excitement now
What a finish photo
Classy ride RE!!
Tuned in with 40km to go, probably perfect timing, good last hour.
Im more pleased for Madouas, must have hurt that final 15k alone.
Superb win for Remco. The terror on his face when he was waiting for the car that bike change
too busy chaining american women to trees to bother about sport.
Didn’t stop me getting a swim in this evening.
(not really )
Is it a development programme thing? ie. to win a medal you have to be so insanely good that you need to be picked up at an early age and nurtured by a national programme - maybe that’s not such a thing in India? IDK. Just idly speculating.
It’s about interest, opportunity, and money surely, the US does relatively poorly in many sports, 'cos despite the money and population, it has little interest in those sports that other rich countries have lots of interest in and as much money to invest.
I’d say India has little interest in most sports, ie there aren’t kids doing the sports, encouraged by facilities, clubs etc. to compete at ever higher levels, and there’s no institutional desire to be compete at sports like China has which bootstraps that interest at a young level.
China seems like a great comparison. Neighbouring country, similar population, top of the medals table.
So maybe like you say it’s about access to opportunities created at gov policy level?
The Indian ex pats I have met here seem pretty interested in sport especially cricket like Jeff says.
edit: also seems to have a massive military, over 5 million people, surprised that doesn’t uncover a few more elite athletes
Kayak Cross is entertaining!
Do t tell Sloggers….
China’s sporting success is driven by ideology, like the eastern bloc countries during the Cold War, right? They put a lot into sporting success across a wide range of sports when they hosted the Olympics.
US success in Olympic sports is economics driven because it tends to be in sports where participants have got college scholarships because of their sporting abilities.
Indians are great at cricket and shooting, but I don’t think there’s the interest or the economic driver for them to be successful at anything else
Kayak Cross is chaos I don’t understand why someone following another paddler wouldn’t choose the other gate when there is one each side
This repechage system across various events is new outside of cycling right?
Olympic sport success (in terms of appearing high on the medal table which needs medalists across a range of sports) is all about throwing money at niche sports where it makes a difference.
We only got this after the Atlanta disaster and starting using lottery money targeted directly at medal prospects.
Australia has always been good at this, ditto Eastern Bloc/China for ideological advancement.
India simply don’t bother, presumably there’s no uproar at their medal count like we had after Atlanta.
It’s like taekwondo in boats
Did I just see Snoop Dog in the crowd watching the Dressage?