Why can't England compete as 'England', without Scotland, Ireland & Wales? Is this a form of cheating?

Question

What if Australia decided to compete as 'Australasia', or as an ANZAC (Australian-New Zealand) combination?

To me, whenever Scotland win a medal for GB, its just not the same. I mean England has been at odds with Ireland, Wales and Scotland for thousands of years, so why combine for the games?

Aren't England strong enough to stand on their own? Even though they have 60,000,000 people compared to Australias 20,000,000. To me their just cheats, lets all combine whenever we feel like it, or whenever we know we're incapable of competing on our own shall we???

Answer 1

If Scotland competed alone we'd have 2 golds and a silver which isn't bad for a nation of 5 million people.

Answer 2

i was saying the same thing to my family i agree olympics  is for countries not regions but by the way i am irish and we dont compete with GB we have our own team and have a bronze secured  in boxing

Answer 3

the USA competes as one team, does anyone complain about that? Just as there are 50 states in the USA, there are four states (more if you include all our left over dependants- for want of a better word) in the UK. I like having Team GB, it's nice that we actually support eachother for the Olympics, and put all our best together.

Answer 4

I guess putting all the countries together to form GB increases the amount of medals we win - take this year for example. Splitting the GB team up wouldn't put everyone that high on the medal table. I don't think we should play as GB i believe it should be our own country like in the commonwealth games.  

Answer 5

Mae Cymru yn neud yn dda eleni 5 medal aur o Gymru

Wales is doing good this year, 5 gold Medals from Wales.  

Answer 6

The English do not have very many gold medal winners. Sebastian Coe is one of the very few winners they have had. They are not a strong athletic group of people. They are just not into things like that. They do have sports but overall they are not very strong people. Have you been over there? Most of them are very thin &  not built for things like the olympics.  I agree with you; they are cheating at the olympics. My question is why is this allowed? Scotland, Wales & Ireland are all separate countries. Great Britain includes Scotland, Wales & England. If you add Ireland then together the four countries make the UK. They should all compete seperately & they definately are cheating. By the way TC- Ireland uses the euro. Wales, Scotland & England uses the pound. I dont care what anyone says. They are four seperate countries! Under any other circumstances had any American tried to clump them together as one country, they would call us stupid. Do you know how many times i have heard them say we are stupid for this exact reason? Yet its ok, when it plays to their benifit? Doesnt make much sense to me.

Answer 7

By their powers combined, they form the super team "Great Britain"

Answer 8

Over which country or countries does the Prime Minister govern? For whom does the British Parliament write laws and legislate? I guess the answers to those questions determine if the United Kingdom or Great Britain is one nation.

Answer 9

Most athletes in England are Irish anyway people just don't know it. Small countries are at a disadvantage. Smaller gene pool  although better genetics can reverse that edge.

Answer 10

The United Kingdom is one country.  

Answer 11

i agree with you if china wants to win more gold they could combine Taiwan,Hongkong,Macao.  

Answer 12

  The reason that Scottland, Ireland (actually only northern Ireland), Wales and England compete together is that they are the same country-the United Kingdom.  

(Southern Ireland-about 2/3 of the island-is a seperate country, The Republic of Ireland).

They all use the pound as their currency which is interchangable between the regions, but more importantly, they are all goverened by the same parliment which has it's base in London, the capital of the United Kingdom.

In fact, it is very similar to the United States in that it has one overhead governing body, yet each individual section (state, constituent) can make their own laws as well as long as they don't conflict with the laws of the governing body (ie federal government in the states.)

Australia and New Zeland can't compete together for the same reason the United States can't compete together with Canada. Also, how could you make them compete seperatly without also making each individual state of the United States compete seperatly.

If you would like to read more, you can go to wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_King...

Hope that helps.

Answer 13

Because England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are legally and politically recognised as one state. It's generally referred to as 'the United Kingdom' but for the purposes of the Olympics, it's always called 'Team GB'. The population of the UK is about 60M: 50M in England and the rest in the other constituent parts.

Are Australia and New Zealand one country with a shared capital, parliament, fiscal budget, flag, currency, armed forces etc etc?

For that matter, would Australia really benefit from having a joint team with NZ? Oh, and 'ANZAC' refers specifically to an Army Corps.

This has nothing to do with the Republic of Ireland, a separate country who compete on their own. Northern Ireland is a constituent part of the United Kingdom.

Taiwan is also effectively a country entirely independent of China.

Actually, the way this question is worded and some of the responses reflect a deep ignorance. They also smack of being sore losers. Come on, we never win anything... let us enjoy our (current) third place!!

@The dude - it doesn't really matter whether you consider those countries to be separate states. Your subjective view of the world is completely irrelevant. Read the Wikipedia entry for 'United Kingdom' and if you understand it, you'll see that you are wrong.