Economists aren't so sure concerning the wisdom of intentionally losing matches. (AP)
The majority of the advice is broadly sensible. Be a rich country with good infrastructure. Have lots of young people. (Sorry, Japan.) Invest a lot of money in preventing child malnutrition. (That means you, India.) Concentrate on your comparative advantage. (If you don’t have lots of sandy beaches, maybe beach volleyball isn’t the sport for you personally?) There's also sneakier strategies:
A country can also win more medals by strategically focusing on events that is relatively easy to win medals. These are usually events that are individual anyway and for which a lot of medals are passed out per event. Think boxing, or even the fighting techinques, where a full group of medals is offered in each weight class (taekwondo provides four medals per weight class). Ireland’s best opportunity for a gold medal may well be Katie Taylor for women’s boxing.
Commonly with team sports there's just one set of medals for the entire sport - just like men’s basketball - and of course smaller and poorer countries will have a harder time reaching the top in those areas. Bulgaria finds Olympic success using these strategies. They’ve won 51 total gold medals in all the Summer Olympics, and 32 of these have come in three sports: lifting weights, wrestling, and shooting (with 12, 16, and four gold medals, respectively).
It’s worth reading the entire piece to determine some of their predictions for future Olympics. Sure, China is a medal-collecting powerhouse right now, but what goes on when the country starts aging rapidly, as demographers expect?
Labels: batminton
