5-Eyes and EU win the Olympics

mindlight · Aug 8, 2021

Congrats to the USA winning the Olympics on a national basis though on a per capita count the British 4th and the Aussies 6th outperformed you

But the real victors in this Olympics have been transnational Western organizations and this demonstrates the supremacy of the West over alternatives when it comes to the pursuit of excellence.

The Five Eyes (US, UK, NZ, Australia, and Canada) got a total of 92 golds
The EU got a total of about 78 golds (not including GB on 22)
The Commonwealth got 69 gold medals
The China block got 38 + 1 (Hong Kong)
The Russia block got 20

Japan is an ally of the West and did brilliantly.
The message is surely clear, reports of the death of Western dominance are clearly exaggerated. China and Russia's lack of real friends mean they are never going to win competitions like this.

Shemjaza · Aug 8, 2021

mindlight said:
Congrats to the USA winning the Olympics on a national basis though on a per capita count the British 4th and the Aussies 6th outperformed you

But the real victors in this Olympics have been transnational Western organizations and this demonstrates the supremacy of the West over alternatives when it comes to the pursuit of excellence.

The Five Eyes (US, UK, NZ, Australia, and Canada) got a total of 92 golds
The EU got a total of about 78 golds (not including GB on 22)
The Commonwealth got 69 gold medals
The China block got 38 + 1 (Hong Kong)
The Russia block got 20

Japan is an ally of the West and did brilliantly.
The message is surely clear, reports of the death of Western dominance are clearly exaggerated. China and Russia's lack of real friends mean they are never going to win competitions like this.

Why would political friends and alliances lead to more wins in athletic and sports competitions?

I think it's more a demonstration that committing money and manpower to the training and research will bear fruit.

mindlight · Aug 8, 2021

Shemjaza said:
Why would political friends and alliances lead to more wins in athletic and sports competitions?

I think it's more a demonstration that committing money and manpower to the training and research will bear fruit.

I am not implying that political advantage ---> sporting advantage.

China and Russia commit serious resources to their athletics programmes but even if China wins the Olympics in the future it cannot compete with the counts of victories accumulated by the networks of English speaking countries, European countries and Commonwealth totals.

The point of the thread is to demonstrate the collective supremacy of countries that work with others as opposed to those that stand alone.

Practically speaking the countries that have done well have invested serious resources in this. But Commonwealth countries for example have their own games and these are a good rehearsal for the Olympics and help to improve the athletes participating highlighting strengths and weaknesses. So the internationalism of these groups of nations has contributed to their success.

The EU is portraying itself as an independent actor that attends G7 conferences examples as an extra to the national actors. Had GB stayed in Europe the EU would have won these games with a collective count of 100 golds. Even without GB, the EU had almost double the count of the Americans or the Chinese.

In an age that talks about the rise of China or the threat of Russia people forget that the dominance hierarchies of the world demonstrated in these Olympics are actually very clear and that individual nations do not measure against internationally integrated countries. Above all these stands the USA which is a member of the 5 eyes, NATO, is allied to the EU & Japan and the Commonwealth nations also. China could never have won these Olympics by this measure because it has no friends or allies.

Shemjaza · Aug 8, 2021

mindlight said:
I am not implying that political advantage ---> sporting advantage.

China and Russia commit serious resources to their athletics programmes but even if China wins the Olympics in the future it cannot compete with the counts of victories accumulated by the networks of English speaking countries, European countries and Commonwealth totals.

The point of the thread is to demonstrate the collective supremacy of countries that work with others as opposed to those that stand alone.

Practically speaking the countries that have done well have invested serious resources in this. But Commonwealth countries for example have their own games and these are a good rehearsal for the Olympics and help to improve the athletes participating highlighting strengths and weaknesses. So the internationalism of these groups of nations has contributed to their success.

The EU is portraying itself as an independent actor that attends G7 conferences examples as an extra to the national actors. Had GB stayed in Europe the EU would have won these games with a collective count of 100 golds. Even without GB, the EU had almost double the count of the Americans or the Chinese.

In an age that talks about the rise of China or the threat of Russia people forget that the dominance hierarchies of the world demonstrated in these Olympics are actually very clear and that individual nations do not measure against internationally integrated countries. Above all these stands the USA which is a member of the 5 eyes, NATO, is allied to the EU & Japan and the Commonwealth nations also. China could never have won these Olympics by this measure because it has no friends or allies.

"I am not implying that political advantage ---> sporting advantage."

and

"China could never have won these Olympics by this measure because it has no friends or allies."

What?

There are constant athletic world championships and constant training from all these nations. Athletics in general and the Olympics very much in particular are important points of national pride and western nations in particular prioritise them as such. My nation, Australia, has a very serious attitude to sport, so while we may have a relatively small population, I bet the money spent per athlete is significantly higher than many.

Rich nations with wealth and leisure for sport are better at sport isn't a meaningful bit of data to analyse political interactions.

Also, you seem to be comparing a single nation to many nations... that means the alliance has many more competitors.

SoldierOfTheKing · Aug 8, 2021

What country won the most medals in the 1936 Olympics? What did that demonstrate the supremacy of? I mean sure, it makes for good propaganda, but it’s really rather superficial…

MyOwnSockPuppet · Aug 11, 2021

mindlight said:
The Five Eyes (US, UK, NZ, Australia, and Canada) got a total of 92 golds
The EU got a total of about 78 golds (not including GB on 22)
The Commonwealth got 69 gold medals
The China block got 38 + 1 (Hong Kong)
The Russia block got 20

If we're being picky about it the UK actually had four teams at the Olympics that won 23 golds, whereas the USA had five teams that won 40 golds between them

Team GB (representing Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Gurnsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man, Anguilla, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn, Saint Helena, Ascension Island, Tristan da Cuhna and the Turks and Caicos Islands) athletes won 22 of them

However there are three British Overseas Territories that had their own Olympic Committees recognized before the rules for dependent territories not being allowed their own teams were changed (in 1996) - the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, and a Bermudian triathlete won the women's gold.

(There's a similar situation with the Puerto Rico team (1 more gold), as well as the teams from Guam, the US Virgin Islands and American Samoa)

buzuxi02 · Aug 25, 2021

This has got to be the stupidest thread ever. Yeah I'm sure female athletics are emphasized outside the "5 eyes" countries just as much..
And the gazillion swimming contests in the olympics that the richer western nations keep winning I'm sure has nothing to do with the lack of swimming pools (and even beaches) outside most western nations.
And the very fact you think EU nations even like each other to such a degree or that speaking English can make you a better athlete.

mindlight · Aug 28, 2021

buzuxi02 said:
This has got to be the stupidest thread ever. Yeah I'm sure female athletics are emphasized outside the "5 eyes" countries just as much..
And the gazillion swimming contests in the olympics that the richer western nations keep winning I'm sure has nothing to do with the lack of swimming pools (and even beaches) outside most western nations.
And the very fact you think EU nations even like each other to such a degree or that speaking English can make you a better athlete.

It was just a bit of fun, but sporting success does actually mirror the true balance of the modern world right now.

Shemjaza · Aug 28, 2021

mindlight said:
It was just a bit of fun, but sporting success does actually mirror the true balance of the modern world right now.

"Things go well for the wealthy and motivated."

Yeah, I guess so, but it's a little sad too.

Bob Crowley · Aug 28, 2021

While it's nice to be near the top in the Olympics (our state premier recently gushed that if the state of Queensland in Australia had been a nation, it would have come seventh in the medals tally, mostly due to a swimmer or three), I don't think it's very important.

Australia with a population of about 25 million people won 46 medals. India with a population of about 1.366 billion won 7 medals. Part of the reason is that Australians take sport seriously, although we don't do so well in the Winter Olympics as we have a limited snow field presence (in summer it disappears altogether).

I think it's superficial to assume sport is some sort of barometer of national power.

It would be a huge mistake to think India is deficient in some way based on this paradigm.

There's a lot of ways they're well and truly ahead of Australia. Their industrial growth far outstrips ours just for starters.

How India Makes Money

... Chemicals are big business in India; The petrochemical industry, which first entered the Indian industrial scene in the 1970s, experienced rapid growth in the 1980s and 1990s.

In addition to chemicals, India produces a large supply of the world’s pharmaceuticals as well as billions of dollars worth of cars, motorcycles, tools, tractors, machinery, and forged steel.

India also mines a large number of gems and common minerals including iron ore, bauxite, and gold along with asbestos, uranium, limestone, and marble. From 2019 to 2020, for example, India mined 729 million tons of coal (which, surprisingly, was not enough to meet the country’s coal needs).11 Oil and gas were extracted at a rate of 34.2 million metric tons and 32.9 billion cubic meters, respectively, in the 2018 to 2019 year.12 ...

... Among the leading services industries in the country are telecommunications, IT, and software, and the workers are employed by both domestic and international companies including Intel (INTC), Texas Instruments (TXN), Yahoo (YHOO), Facebook (FB), Google (GOOG), and Microsoft (MSFT)....

While we're busy winning a few medals, they're building up their national economy.

buzuxi02 · Aug 28, 2021

mindlight said:
It was just a bit of fun, but sporting success does actually mirror the true balance of the modern world right now.

How so? If we account for population size Cuba won the most amount of medals. Likewise taking population size Russia itself won more medals than the U.S. How much moreso if we take GDP into account?
Much of the non-western world does not play nor even recognize many of the events in the olympics as sport to boot.

keith99 · Aug 28, 2021

And how does one adjust for the limits on number of entries.

Both the United States and Australia routinely have swimmers who do not get to compete in the Olympics who would otherwise have been odds on favorites to make the finals and likely to medal.

BTW Stanford would easily have been in the top 10 countries if they could count their students and alumni. And that of course does not count any team events. They surely would have medaled in Women's water Polo. Heck even money the Pac-12 would have swept the medals (each school could have kept current students and alumni of course).

Red Gold · Sep 7, 2021

There are more eyes than 5

Here is a brief breakdown of each of the three Alliances:

Five Eyes: US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
Nine Eyes: Five Eyes + Denmark, France, Holland, Norway
Fourteen Eyes: Nine Eyes + Germany, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Spain

5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, & 14 Eyes Countries – What You NEED to Know

5-Eyes and EU win the Olympics

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