I’m having trouble finding a breakdown of total metals won by a country compared to how many opportunities they had to win a metal. For example, if a country put up a competitor in every single event and won X metals. Compared to if a country only put competitors in a few events and won X metals.
Mostly trying to do this to further compare U.S.A. and China. Because I didn’t see China in many of the track and field events and I know America won a lot of metals in those events and yet we are still tied for gold, so that is impressive on China I think. But there might be other events where China enters a lot of athletes and U.S.A. doesn’t.
Or does every country have an athlete compete in every event and every discipline but only the best make the initial cut?
Just curious if anyone has any further insight on this.
For one, you have to qualify at events in the preceding years before the Olympics. A nation isn’t just sending athletes because it wants to, these individual athletes or teams have to actually qualify (exceptions being the exhibition events as well as some big team events like basketball).
The US has the most athletes at the Olympics because it has the most athletes who were capable of qualifying for the Olympics. In fact this year there were about a hundred athletes from the US who qualified but didn’t go because there are also caps on the amount of athletes that a nation can send to any given event.
As for the US vs China in events, yes China doesn’t have nearly the track and field athletics that the US does. They focus more on events that can be trained through repetition. Table tennis, weight lifting and diving are huge events for China. They won every gold medal in table tennis and diving this year and I believe they won the majority in weight lifting (women’s podium was all China). The US had athletes in all those events too but they aren’t big in the US so they didn’t do well. China has the government guide their Olympic team to produce medal winning athletes and the US system is just more organic with millions of kids competing over years and eventually a few hundred elite athletes rise to the top.
Which is more impressive? That’s up to you.
Thank you for the insights on the pre qualifying stuff and limit on number of athletes