Halfway down the Danube

Olympic notes

Romania had a pretty good Olympics: 21 medals, of which 8 were gold. That put Romania 14th in the world... not bad for a country of 21 million people. By way of comparison, Romania ended up with more medals than Canada, Spain, the Netherlands or Brazil.

That said, there were some peculiarities. The biggest one: all of the gold medals were won by women. I don't know this was true for any other country with that many golds.

Also, three of the eight golds came in (women's) rowing. Odd, because rowing was not traditionally a Romanian strength.

Meanwhile, Serbia... oh, dear. Serbia won just two medals, both silver -- one in women's pistol shooting, and the other in men's water polo. Not so great, for a country of seven million people -- especially given that Serbia was once the biggest piece of Yugoslavia, a country which used to bring home large numbers of medals every four years.

By way of regional comparison: Bulgaria, eight million people, twelve medals, two gold; Croatia, four million people, five medals, one gold; Slovenia, two million people, one silver and three bronzes.

I'm not sure what this means. After all, Cuba was a big winner (27 medals, nine of them gold, with just twelve million people). On the other hand, Ireland -- one of the nicest places to live anywhere, a prosperous and free country of five million people, the "Celtic Tiger" -- won just one medal. So I don't really think that Olympic medal counts tell us anything meaningful.

That said, the Romanians are pretty pleased.

Posted by douglas at August 31, 2004 03:58 PM