Discussion: Taiwan?

I forget what exactly they called them, but there was at least one Olympic Athlete from not-China (I'm assuming Taiwan) as well as those from Russia under the Olympic flag.

Your eyes are sharper than mine! I didn't catch the not-China athlete. I wonder if they had segregated facilities for China and not-China. Though, in truth, when I think of Taiwanese athletes in the Winter Olympics, I mostly think "not-winter"--ha!

Let's just say that since Jon has been drafting final map updates, we've been home a lot lately. There was a lot of Olympics playing in the background at our very small cabin...

Same here--if there was coverage on, I had the TV on in the next room, and if I heard something that sounded interesting, I ignored it--unless it was figure skating, of course. To me, the most fun thing to watch by far was biathlon. There just wasn't much of it, at least when I was home and watching.

The biathlon was definitely the most fun to watch with several surprise medals for Sweden! I spent the second week in Spain and didn´t get an opportunity to see everything live but did catch enough of the action on Eurosport Germany at our hotel.

It's only natural people are going to root for the home team, wherever they are from, and of course people want to see some of their athletes on the podium. And while maybe there is too much emphasis on medal counts, it's also only natural that it will be of great interest form any number of viewpoints.

I can't help but find it interesting to compare the spectacular success of Norway with that of their next door, twice as large (population) neighbor Sweden--still quite successful in their own right, but well short of Norway.

The things that readily come to mind that might help explain the difference would be (in no particular order): 1) a geography somewhat more overall suited to the range of winter sports competed in, 2) a population that is demographically much better located for outdoor winter sports (the area below a line drawn from just above Göteberg to just above Stockholm must contain the bulk of Sweden's population while at the same time corresponding to an area where winter/continuous snow cover is highly uncertain these days), 3) better funding/support for the athletes, and 4) some element of randomness--that is, Norway was of course going to do quite well almost no matter what going into these Olympics, but maybe the minute differences often separating 1st, from 2nd, 2nd from 3rd, and 3rd from 4th, etc. happened to disproportionately go in Norway's favor this time around.

What say you, bubo?

I agree on your points 1-3 as a combined reason for lack of Swedish success compared to Norway. There´s no doubt that they in many ways are better than Sweden. Winter sports hold a strong cultural grip on Norway while Sweden also have other sports that are more popular in terms of participation.

Looking at the total number of medals they won in Pyeong Chang there were also several that they won in sports hardly existing in Sweden these days. Traditional winter sports such as ski jumping and speed skating have very few active athletes in Sweden while nordic combined doesn´t even exist (as far as I know?).

As far as randomness goes that actually hit Norway quite hard the other way too. Several of the main Norwegian favourites missed out in the chase for medals.

It's funny you mention Nordic Combined, because I was thinking last night that I hadn't heard word one about Nordic Combined this entire Olympics.

I liked biathlon, too. It did give me flashbacks to trying to get control of my breathing after running up the hill to the rifle range wearing a gas mask during Sandhurst. Never an easy task, since I was always on the slower side and therefore sucking wind more than the rest of the team. That just made me appreciate those who could pull it together to shoot clean even more.