Re: "It takes money to win medals," Aug. 14.
Those who manage the Olympics don't "rate" the performance of the countries involved. The honours and the medals go to individual athletes and their teams.
However, national spirit creates widespread interest in "how our country is doing." The media feed this interest with country lists - mainly of medal counts and point systems based on these medal counts. High counts are used to justify pride in everything from training program to a way of life. How many people live in each country, how rich it is and the size of each national team are obviously factors and are included in charts that can be found on the Internet.
Keeping all this in mind, it appears that some major medal-winning countries didn't do as well as might be expected.
The United States and China were 47th and 73rd in tables that factored in population. Grenada and Jamaica were first and second. Canada was 45th and Britain was 20th.
Canada did just fine. Our athletes and trainers can look on what they did with satisfaction. More money for sports might be helpful, but Britain, rating higher on most charts than Canada, is one of the few countries that does not pay cash to medal winners.
Most folks, faced with all these complications, would prefer just to sit back and enjoy the action. But, now that the Games are over, it might be a good idea to climb off that sofa and get some action ourselves.
Brian Turner Victoria
