Did Australia do poorly in the Olympic Games?

Question

I am talking to my friend from Australia and he said Australia did poorly in this year's Olympic Games.

Australia has a population of 21 million and ended up with this result:

Gold Medals: 14

Silver Medals: 15

Bronze Medals: 17

Total: 46 medals.

Is this a poor performance?

Interested in non-Australian opinions.

I'm from Tennessee.

Answer 1

I think the Aussies did great - but I am sure that there are people out there (in Australia) who think we didn't do so well - we got less gold than we did in Athens or Sydney.  

Some of our "expected" medallists didn't perform as well as we thought, yet we had some unexpected triumphs too.  

I think the Australian media tends to be too critical of our athletes - eg. when Eammon Sullivan won silver in his race, the guy interviewing him was all forlorn and downcast - hey - it was still a bloody silver medal for goodness' sake!  Nothing wrong with that!  

We also forget that some of our HUGE heroes, such as Cathy Freeman (athletics), Ian Thorpe and Michael Klim (swimming) and others have retired now.  Those guys/gals were pretty amazing!

All in all, it was a fantastic result and I couldn't be prouder of our athletes.

Answer 2

I thought Australia did pretty good.  They finished first and second in the womens triathlon and won 44 other medals.

I think Australia did well in the events in which they are interested.  Some countries are just not interested in table tennis or more obscure sports, badmitten etc.

I haven't done the math but I believe if you calculate medals on a per-capita basis they would be first place.

Answer 3

Your avatar sure looks Asian to me though.

Answer 4

Hey Jojon we ARE smaller in population but we aussies aren't whingers I think we did a great job. unlike other countries who pay their athletes to train our's have to make their own way in working as well as training or count on their parents or sponsers and I beg to differ on registered athletes compared to China, maybe you are counting Aussie rules etc which are not olympic events so Go Aussie OI OI OI  

Answer 5

It's interesting how the Aussies always play the 'we're a small nation" card when it comes to olympics medals.

Relatively speaking that is true, however you cannot judge a country's success by population. You have to take a look at the number of registered atheletes in the country. Although Aust has a relatively small population, given that the nation is sports mad, the number of registered atheletes in Aust far outweigh those in China.

In other words, Aust have a bigger pool to choose from than China, which makes Aust' performace relatively bad.

Answer 6

I am proud of all of them they did their best and we won some we didn't expect to and lost some we expected to win so it kind of evened out.

I would have like to see the Opals to win but that's the breaks and the Gold medal in the diving made up for some of the disappointment.

Answer 7

According to how many medals Australia was 'supposed' to win then yes we did poorly. The swimmers, cyclists and a few others didnt do aswell as predicted. But on the upside there was some unexpected wins too like in the pole vault and dive pool.

Personally I think to win that many medals with such a small population is pretty good! Goes to show just how much money goes into sport in Australia.

I know you wanted non-aussie opinions but I wanted to answer anyways :)

Answer 8

In relation to the population size, I think Australia did extremely well. Maybe your friend was expecting some different results in certain events.  I'm from the US.

Answer 9

They did about the same as in Athens. Then they got gold-17, silver-16, bronze-16.  They probably think of it as a poor performance because Great Britain were more successful, GB hardly ever outdo Australia in sport.

Answer 10

No I think we did really well especially considering our small population!

There were some athletes who didn't perform as well as had been expected, but we still did well!

Harriet

Answer 11

I'm Canadian and I think they kicked butt!!!  They are by far the biggest country to be in the top 10 in Medals Per Capita count and they rate at a whopping 4th... h**l, they are like 6th for medals count overall and they only have like 20 million people... now that I think about it, you're question is kind of obvious.

One thing that I will add is that the Aussie women are really amazing, they do much better then the men.

Now, if it was the winter olympics it would be a different story but since there's no snow in Australian it's not really their fault :oP

Answer 12

I don't think they did poorly but by their own high standards, I'm sure they're not too happy with their standings...Aussie are one of the elite sporting nations, so it's surprising that they didn't do as well as usual....

One highlight is they did manage to halt a clean sweep of the diving gold going to China....and it was great to see the Aussie guy win gold in the pole vault...

I'm from NZ

Answer 13

i am australian, but looking at it objectively....we have a small population, and we still manage to rank 6th...if we had a population the size of America or China...we would OBLITERATE you! lol...it's a fact we're awsuM!

Answer 14

I am so happy & proud of our Aussies who represented our country so well. It was tops to see our girls on the front pages of the newspaper, I think they all did a great job & Im sure every Aussie is thankful of all their performances.. Win or lose, I reckon they did unbelievably well against the other dominant countries. Good work Australia! lol

Answer 15

finishing 6th is pretty good to me  in the gold medal count or 5 in the overall medal count  

Answer 16

"At least they didn't cheat like the Chinese!"

Australian did great in the olympics but you are a sore loser.

Answer 17

your friend is right --- for all the expectations --- we failed to deliver .

i could go on about the events we " failed in " but i will only mention a couple --- cycling and rowing .

our coaching staff at every level needs to take a step up --- if funding is a problem --- then we need to tap the government (s) on the shoulder and say --- ' do realise the poms beat us this year --- and why !? -- because they put more money into their athletes performances through their coaching regimes '

she'll be right ; will not do us any good next time --- we will lag further and further behind .

there were a lot of good and unexpected performances --- but that was more good luck than good planning --- else we would have had egg on our faces .

good luck .