With the Games of the XXX Olympiad fully underway in
London, I thought I would turn myself towards some Olympic numbers. I fully
intended to do a look at declining records for speed across sports (swimming,
track and field, cycling and so on) and still might get to it, but I was
intrigued by a different statistic before I could get that effort off the
ground.
China has become a dominant player in the Cold War-era
game of topping the Olympic medal table. Since their return to the games in
1984 after 32 years – China boycotted the Olympics between 1952 and 84 due to
the presence of the Republic of China, known in the IOC since 1979 as Chinese
Taipei – they have won 385 medals in seven Summer Olympics. This obscures somewhat
their recent run of strong results with 221 of those medals having come in the
last three games. What prompted further inquiry was not the volume, however,
but the composition of the total.