The Irish, discourage by their horse doping scandal at the Olympics, might get behind a European Union team, that would rule the games. (Great interactive map of medals per country on the New York Times site)
Let's be honest -- this Olympics was rubbish. With the exception of a couple of the boxers providing some unexpected moments of pride, the whole thing will be chalked down as a bit of a nightmare.
But with another doping scandal and the admittedly entertaining sight of the great and the good of the Irish Olympic scene tearing lumps off each other, what on earth can we do?
A solution: join forces with the EU, for some real athletic power. Just counting 6 countries in the EU (without Russia) the medal total (G-S-B): 62-64-64. That's domination. (Click on image to the right)
Well, step forward the Young European Federalists, a group of young people from Europe
who want to, erm, federalise Europe.
Their latest genius idea is to scrap all those pesky national boundaries and simply enter a single European team.
Team EU, as they have imaginatively called it, would: "have won more medals than either America or China... It would also help combat nationalism which is always quick to spread at these events."
The athletic power of 800 million European athletes would be awesome, and as mentioned lead in medals.
Ah yes, we need to stamp out the terrifying, racist sight of people celebrating when their country does well.
Rather predictably, the English have reacted with fury to this suggestion, but they're just being selfish because they had such a successful Games.
We, on the other hand, were pants. So, we should definitely hop on board this bandwagon.
Although the leaked memo also said something about forcing us all to speak German during the Games. And to obey our Aryan masters...
But no more horse doping, OK?
Team EU, as they would have it, would win far less medals for one simple reason - the unified team can send only one delegation team to the competition. This European win more medals thing is just self masturbation by the Europeans. By the same calculation, the former Soviet Union is still the greatest king in sports if you add all the medals won in Beijing by Russia and all the ex-Soviet republics. Likewise, if every state in US send a delegation team to the Olympics, every province in China does the same, they would have won more medals as well.
Posted by: yccnorth | 08/26/2008 at 11:02
It is incorrect to state that the English had a successful Games. England does not send a team to the Olympic Games. I trust that you bring a greater degree of accuracy to your studies than you do to your musings on this site.
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