Videos for it are no longer available because of music copyright agreements. They were only available for three days, this was planned before the games.

It is by definition a sport, its a physical activity that you can compete against others in.

Hell by the IOC standards they even see chess as a sport, so you’re way far off if you think a form of dancing couldn’t be in the Olympics.

The US was obviously the favorite and you can’t be disappointed with #1, but objectively we did very well in total medals as far as what the projections looked like from most sources I saw. We were 4-5 gold medals behind expectations (men’s swimming missed a few that were expected I know, as well as the men’s 4x100). Got a couple surprises (women’s cycling, men’s rowing) though to make up for it a little bit.

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.

Table tennis is kind of the communist Olympic sport of choice (USSR used to be great) and they just focused on diving because it’s an area you can get good at with repetition, rather than track and field events where you need a generation of kids doing events that eventually get narrowed down to a few hundred from the millions who participated.

Athletics aren’t really a big thing in China in general, so their government has decided to focus on certain events and sets up their own academies for them. They identify kids they think will be good and send them there.

I suppose its ‘unfair’ in a certain sense but in reality the Olympics are never going to be fair. Disparity in populations, investment by the governments, genetics of athletes, support of athletes by governments, etc…

The IOC makes a HUGE amount of money already. For instance, the US broadcaster NBC has the most expensive rights fees of any broadcaster in the world, they paid almost $8B to broadcast the games for 4 cycles of the summer and winter games.

That money has gone to the IOC, who uses it for god only knows what. If tomorrow I heard there was some massive money laundering scheme or other fraud going on at the IOC it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. They’re sitting on a gigantic pile of cash and ostensibly don’t do anything with it or have any regulatory review of it. That’s just breeding ground for corruption and to top it all off, it’s based in Switzerland.

I could see maybe once every three years. Though anything quicker than that and the Olympics would become a LOT less special. There also has to be time to have qualifiers, to be able to actually determine who comes to the Olympics itself, that’s quite a process when it’s the entire world competing.

Track and field, swimming and gymnastics all have major televised competitions and championship events if you’re interested more in the performance than the spectacle, and they’re part of the Olympic qualifiers so you’re seeing the people who will be in the Olympics. They’re a lot of fun to watch and also make watching the games better, because you know your athletes and who they’re racing against better. Otherwise if you only watch the Olympics, by the time you get to know everyone their events are almost over.

The track and field World Championship is especially good. They’ve usually got a big crowd and it feels just like you’re watching the Olympics. And at least in the US, the same announcers even do them so it’s basically a mini Olympics for track and field athletes (NBC is in charge of the broadcast too). They are held twice between each Olympics.