SPORT
Gold Free Games
/ Tom Flynn
08.08.08
There will be 302 scheduled events at the Beijing Olympic Games this summer, resulting in the awarding of over 900 total medals. In the U.S. our focus is naturally on the events in which we’ve got a chance at making a good showing. This will lead to some scattered viewing: Sports Illustrated predicts we’ll depart China with over 120 medals in our weighty USA bags, including 45 golds. Although it shouldn’t, it’s hard for the sheer volume of probable success not to obscure the difficulty of winning an individual medal.
SI’s medal projections for smaller countries such as Uruguay are decidedly less shiny. In Uruguay’s specific case it is completely without luster: 0 silver, 0 bronze, 0 gold. Try to imagine the same prospects for the US and it’s unlikely you’ll conceptualize the notion; Americans have never watched an Olympic games without at least a solid hopeful. We’re fortunate enough to wonder instead if Michael Phelps will leave China with his rightful share of the bounty.
For the smaller countries often their entire hope for victory lies in an upset. No improbable upsets, no medals. More specifically no improbable upsets directly involving their country, no medals. In the summer of 1995 I touched down in Oslo, the capital of a country with perennially scant summer Olympic prospects (2008 SI Norway medal projection: 0 gold). I arrived just in time to experience through a small country lens the faint stirrings of what would become the unlikeliest of Olympic triumphs at the 1996 Games in Atlanta.
Oslo is not your ordinary place for an American to visit, but my reason for the trip was straightforward enough: get my 11-year old nephew Noel on a plane from the US, return him safely to his home in Norway, and if I converted on parts one and two of the deal I could stay and enjoy a weeklong visit. I pulled it off.
On the same day as we were arriving in Oslo, the 1995 Track and Field World Championships were getting underway in Gothenburg, Sweden. I was aware of them, as Michael Johnson at that time was compelling almost every American into at least a dilettante’s glance towards track and field as he tore up the record books in the 200 and 400 meters. Johnson was the most celebrated American sprinter since Carl Lewis and it was expected that in Gothenburg he would handily take both races.
On the in-flight SAS magazine I got my first view of the championships through Scandinavian eyes as it mentioned the two best Norwegian hopefuls: Geir Moen in the 200 meters and Vebjorn Rodal in the 800. Moen was the more highly touted of the two, having recently won the European Championships and in doing so becoming the first Norwegian medalist in a sprint competition since Haakon Tran Berg turned the trick in 1946. Earlier in the year he’d won the World Indoor Championships at the 200 and was by most measures world class.
SI’s medal projections for smaller countries such as Uruguay are decidedly less shiny. In Uruguay’s specific case it is completely without luster: 0 silver, 0 bronze, 0 gold. Try to imagine the same prospects for the US and it’s unlikely you’ll conceptualize the notion; Americans have never watched an Olympic games without at least a solid hopeful. We’re fortunate enough to wonder instead if Michael Phelps will leave China with his rightful share of the bounty.
For the smaller countries often their entire hope for victory lies in an upset. No improbable upsets, no medals. More specifically no improbable upsets directly involving their country, no medals. In the summer of 1995 I touched down in Oslo, the capital of a country with perennially scant summer Olympic prospects (2008 SI Norway medal projection: 0 gold). I arrived just in time to experience through a small country lens the faint stirrings of what would become the unlikeliest of Olympic triumphs at the 1996 Games in Atlanta.
Oslo is not your ordinary place for an American to visit, but my reason for the trip was straightforward enough: get my 11-year old nephew Noel on a plane from the US, return him safely to his home in Norway, and if I converted on parts one and two of the deal I could stay and enjoy a weeklong visit. I pulled it off.
On the same day as we were arriving in Oslo, the 1995 Track and Field World Championships were getting underway in Gothenburg, Sweden. I was aware of them, as Michael Johnson at that time was compelling almost every American into at least a dilettante’s glance towards track and field as he tore up the record books in the 200 and 400 meters. Johnson was the most celebrated American sprinter since Carl Lewis and it was expected that in Gothenburg he would handily take both races.
On the in-flight SAS magazine I got my first view of the championships through Scandinavian eyes as it mentioned the two best Norwegian hopefuls: Geir Moen in the 200 meters and Vebjorn Rodal in the 800. Moen was the more highly touted of the two, having recently won the European Championships and in doing so becoming the first Norwegian medalist in a sprint competition since Haakon Tran Berg turned the trick in 1946. Earlier in the year he’d won the World Indoor Championships at the 200 and was by most measures world class.