cactus-jack wrote:
It's sort of the same with swimming in the summer olympics. When you talk about the "All-time Olympian" it's based on medals, and it's almost allways a swimmer who leads on.
Say you can take a gold medal in three Olympiads, that's probably the most one person can do without being exceptionaly good.
A swimmer can take 24(8 swimming events?) gold medals in his career, whilst a pole vaulter can take 3. Who's the better athlete? Hard to say.
Ashton Eaton... Or whoever wins the Decathlon! Afterall, those guys have to be good at almost all track and Field events. Its not enough to be good at the 100m and 110mh cause you also have to do the fearsome 400m sprint distance and even worse the 1500m. And all of that in only 2 days.
And some of the times/results they achieve arent too far of the guys who specialise in one discipline!
Speed skating, swimming, track cycling... let them have their medal chances. These sports define themselves by the olympic dream. They lack their own prestigious events (such as Tour de France, Football World Championship, Grand Slam Tournaments etc) and thus need to compensate by a crap load of olympic medals.
Edited by Shonak on 16-02-2014 21:16
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
Shonak wrote:
Speed skating, swimming, track cycling... let them have their medal chances. These sports define themselves by the olympic dream. They lack their own prestigious events (such as Tour de France, Football World Championship, Grand Slam Tournaments etc) and thus need to compensate by a crap load of olympic medals.
cactus-jack wrote:
It's sort of the same with swimming in the summer olympics. When you talk about the "All-time Olympian" it's based on medals, and it's almost allways a swimmer who leads on.
Say you can take a gold medal in three Olympiads, that's probably the most one person can do without being exceptionaly good.
A swimmer can take 24(8 swimming events?) gold medals in his career, whilst a pole vaulter can take 3. Who's the better athlete? Hard to say.
Yep, history will always speak about Phelps, who just won 20medals on doing the same in eight events per olympics, while who outside of czech republic will remember Jan Zelezny, who has won 1992, 1996, 2000 Olympics javelin throw and finished second in 1988? In fact, it is much more impressive to win three in the row in just one competition...
Edited by Avin Wargunnson on 17-02-2014 08:04
Ski Jumping, Team Man
1. Germany (Freund/Kraus/Wank/Wellinger)
2. Austria (Diethart/Haybroeck/Morgenstern/Schlierenzauer)
3. Japan (Ito/Kasai/Shimizu/Takeuchi)
Germany 
The Netherlands 
Norway 
Switzerland 
Russian Federation 
Canada 
United States of America 
Poland 
People's Republic of China 
Belarus 
Sweden 
Austria 
France 
Japan 
Czech Republic 
Slovenia 
Korea 
Great Britain 
Slovakia 
Italy 
Finland 
Latvia 
Australia 
Croatia 
Ukraine 
Kazachstan 
