Monday, August 11, 2008

Why does China win so many gold medals?

So here are the Chinese medal tallies from the past four Olympics (in reverse chronological order, g/s/b):

32-17-14
28-16-15
16-22-16
16-22-12

The tally so far this year is 9-3-2. The disproportionate spike in gold medals is interesting because every other country with a large (>10, hence statistical) medal count has a relatively even distribution -- like China 92/96. Is China dominating relatively uncompetitive events?

3 comments:

Grobstein said...

Is China dominating relatively uncompetitive events?

I read an article that suggested this was an explicit strategy of the Chinese team, and the examples seemed persuasive, but I can't find it now.

Zed said...

Thanks. Wonder if they mind that their strategy is obvious from the medal count.

Alan said...

Commies only care about the bottom line. They're glass-bottom-feeders