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How about this: China only sent 621 athletes out of 1.3 billion people, and Brit has 1361 with a population of merely 62 million.
by chj 14y ago
How about this:
China only sent 621 athletes out of 1.3 billion people, and Brit has 1361 with a population of merely 62 million.
- bruceboughton 14y ago1361? Team GB is about 541 strong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_at_the_2012_Summer_Olympics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain_at_the_2012_Summe...
- Someone 14y agoI guess the difference is the inclusion of the non-competing members of the team. http://totallympics.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=2312 http://totallympics.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=231... claims 542 for GB, and 386 for China. GB has a larger team because it a) made an enormous extra effort and b) automatically qualifies for every sport it enters. Sports such as waterpolo, volleyball, football, and hockey typically admit only the world's top 12 or so of countries. GB probably has an entry in all of them. Being team sports, that adds up. The interesting thing to see for GB is how far they will fall back in ten years time. They were abysmal in 1996 (one gold), but grew since.
- nl 14y agoBased on the Australian experience Great Britain will start dropping back in 12 years time (assuming funding for elite sports falls off somewhat like it has in Australia). You'll get plenty of silver though...
- vacri 14y agoIt's also considerably cheaper to field a larger team as the host nation. Or at least, there's so much money being splashed around that the budget for the actual team is peanuts.
- badragon 14y agochina sent 380. GB is the host country. It gets automatic entries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics#Sorted_by_number_of_athletes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics#Sorted_by_...