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Olympic success for England and Finland, failure for Sweden
Every year when the World Ice Hockey Championships are held, a good friend of mine states, “I honestly don’t care where we finish as long as we beat Sweden ……. third place would be brilliant if Sweden were fourth.”
The final medal table from the Beijing Olympics delighted my friend. Set a realistic target of three medals (of any colour) following an excellent performance from all three javelin throwers culminating in Tero Pitkämäki’s bronze, Finland returned home with four medals to finish 44th in the medal table. Sweden could only manage a disappointing 56th.
For those who enjoy Swede bashing, the result of the Olympics in Beijing was the worst for Sweden since St Louis in 1904, when they didn’t even participate!
Four years ago in Athens Sweden won four gold medals. In Beijing, defending champion, Stefan Holm (high jump) managed only fourth, with unknown Britain, Germaine Mason, collecting a surprise silver. Triple jumper, Christian Olsson, did not even travel to Beijing following a hamstring injury at the DN Galan in July. Olsson’s absence left the way open for Phillip Idowu to collect another silver for Team GB. Most disappointing of all, reigning heptathlon champion, Carolina Klüft, lost her motivation for the event and decided to compete in the long jump and triple jump instead, finishing 6th and 20th respectively.
Even more bizarrely, Ara Abrahamian, threw away his bronze medal, and swimming medal hopeful, Therese Alshammar, did not even make it to the start because her swimming suit ripped and inexplicably fell apart! Greco-Roman wrestler Abrahamian was beaten in the 84 kg class semi-final by eventual gold medal winner Andrea Minguzzi of Italy. Disgusted by the verdict, he shouted at the referee and confronted the judges before being restrained by teammates. The row continued at the medal ceremony as he only grudgingly mounted the podium and after receiving his medal made a point of taking it off and leaving it in the centre of the competition mat. The medal was later returned to the sport's governing body.
Beijing 2008 Medal Table (Athens 2004 in brackets)
At the Athens Olympics in 2004, Team GB finished 10th in the medal table with 30 medals (9 gold, 9 silver and 12 bronze). Somewhat pessimistically as it transpired, prior to the Beijing Games the target was eighth place in the medals table, which would equate to about 12 gold medals, the ultimate goal being to finish fourth in the medal table in London 2012. This will now need to be revised.
Beijing was Team GB’s most successful Games in a century, with a total of 47 medals (19 of them gold, 13 silver and 15 bronze) surpassing every previous Games except 1908 in London (when many of the events had only British competitors) elevating British sport into the premier league of Olympic nations.
Only Russia, with 23 golds from 72 medals, the USA (36 from 110) and China (51 from 100) lie ahead of them, and Germany, Australia and France were comfortably beaten.
Team GB's success came from a number of different sports - cycling, sailing, rowing, swimming and boxing. But only 400 metres star, Christine Ohurougu, won gold as the athletics squad ended up with just four medals, some way short of expectations. Britain also failed to pick up a single medal in the relay events, dropping the baton in both men’s and women’s 4 x 100 metres. It remains to be seen if Team GB has enough strength in depth to finish third in the medal table in 2012.
Mike Bangle is the owner of Talking English language consultancy and can be contacted at mike.bangle(at)phnet.fi
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