Struck by the image of three commonwealth flags being raised at one of the medal ceremonies on Friday, I thought it was remarkable how many medals were being gained by countries which had at one time or another absorbed some British traditions through colonisation. So I though I might try constructing my own medal table by aggregating the IOC countries by Empire.
Of course I had a scope for deciding just how to define an Empire especially with respect to date in history. I decided that choosing the extent of the British Empire/Commonwealth 65 years ago just before India became independent in August 1947 would a good date - favourable to the British total. So India and South Africa are in, but Egypt was out, as of course was the USA after the events of 1776. Loosing the USA does unfortunately mean that we loose a great number of medals.
But what other empires were significant in 1947? The only one I could really identify was the so called Eastern Bloc - a group of countries more or less under the rule of the USSR. So I grouped those together. I fudged it because I can't really split out the East Germans from the unified Germany total that is competing in 2012. I also cheated a little because Yugoslavia more or less left the Eastern Bloc in 1948 after the row between Tito and Stalin and I decided that the 2012 medal score of the Serbians, Croatians and Slovenians should not be included in my tally for the 1948 Eastern Block 'Empire'.
This then provided me with 4 major empire and country groupings for the 2012 Olympics:
On Saturday morning The British Empire/Commonwealth 1947 was in second place in my medal table, but after Super Saturday the top places are:
Of course I had a scope for deciding just how to define an Empire especially with respect to date in history. I decided that choosing the extent of the British Empire/Commonwealth 65 years ago just before India became independent in August 1947 would a good date - favourable to the British total. So India and South Africa are in, but Egypt was out, as of course was the USA after the events of 1776. Loosing the USA does unfortunately mean that we loose a great number of medals.
But what other empires were significant in 1947? The only one I could really identify was the so called Eastern Bloc - a group of countries more or less under the rule of the USSR. So I grouped those together. I fudged it because I can't really split out the East Germans from the unified Germany total that is competing in 2012. I also cheated a little because Yugoslavia more or less left the Eastern Bloc in 1948 after the row between Tito and Stalin and I decided that the 2012 medal score of the Serbians, Croatians and Slovenians should not be included in my tally for the 1948 Eastern Block 'Empire'.
This then provided me with 4 major empire and country groupings for the 2012 Olympics:
- British Empire/Commonwealth (1947)
- Eastern Bloc (1948)
- USA
- China
On Saturday morning The British Empire/Commonwealth 1947 was in second place in my medal table, but after Super Saturday the top places are:
- 80 medals -- British Empire/Commonwealth (1947)
- 79 medals -- Eastern Bloc (1948)
- 69 medals -- Euro Zone
- 54 medals -- USA
- 53 medals -- China
