Can't say that we watch an overwhelming amount of the Olympics. Too often, we knew the results before the actual telecast. The coverage was not exactly scintillating either. The third strike was the endless parade of commercials.
The following is a recap of the Olympics by number provided by Jay Weiner of The Sporting News:
204: Record number of nations participating.
132: Olympic records set.
87: Nations that won medals.
80: Ratings share in China for the Opening Ceremonies.
43: World records set.
43: Percent of competitors who were women, highest ever.
40: Olympic-bound athletes popped for drug use BEFORE the Games and barred; six caught during the Games . . . so far.
8: Gold medals for U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps.
4: Nations winning their first-ever medals (Afghanistan, Mauritius, Tajikistan and Togo)
3: Gold medals for Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.
3: Nations winning their first-ever gold medals (Bahrain, Mongolia and Panama).
2: Batons dropped by U.S. 4x100 relay teams.
The extremely commercial nature of the Games and the competition by nations to be the host nation are somewhat of a turn-off. I don't think that this is what the Greeks had in mind with the Olympics.
What would be more interesting and engender more of a united nations of the world atmosphere would be an Olympics that had the following:
1. All events would be team events
2. Any nation that wants to send athletes would be allowed to do so.
3. Once at the site, the athletes would allowed to sign for events.
4. Teams would be selected for each event by randomly drawing names of signed up athletes to form teams. Each team made up of athletes of various nations would compete against one another.
5. To ensure balance on the teams, the athletes would be given a score based on past performance that could be used for the random draw (e.g., each team would have the same number of top tier athletes).
This would be global athletics.
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