The Land of the Free & the Home of the World's Best Athletes!

With the 2008 Communist Chinese Olympic Games over, many have been amazed by the performance of the Chinese Communists. During these Olympic Games, the ChiComs have an Olympic best 51 Gold Medals. The United States won a total of 36 Gold Medals. The United States won an Olympic best 110 total Medals when including Silver and Bronze Medals trailed in 2nd place by the ChiComs at 100 total Medals.

So, it would appear that the United States has been passed by the Commie Chinese as the world's sports superpower since the Commie Chinese earned so many Golds. This should not come as a surprise since China has 19.8% of the world's population compared to 4.8% for the United States. Plus, the economy of the Chinese Commies will soon overpass the United States as the world's largest industrial superpower & within the next 20 years as the world's #1 total economy.

But when we look at the total Medal counts as Chris Chase of Yahoo Sports 4th Place Blog did, we realize that the Chinese won 27 of their total Gold Medals in judged "sports" compared to just 4 Gold Medals in judged "sports" for the United States.

As Chase points out when removing judged Medals from the total, the total Medal count of the China & United States would change
from:

Chinese Commies: 51 Gold, 21 Silver & 28 Bronze Medals for a total of 100 Medals
USA: 36 Gold, 38 Silver & 36 Bronze Medals for a total of 110 Medals

to:

Chinese Commies: 24 Gold, 17 Silver, 14 Bronze Medals for a still impressive total of 55 "real" Medals
USA: 32 Gold, 31 Silver & 21 Bronze Medals for a dominating total of 80 "real" Medals.

Since the Olympics is supposed to be a time for athletes of the world to come together and compete in fair competitions & decide for themselves who is the fastest, strongest, or can score the most goals, etc., having "sports" in the Olympics which are decided by judges, is counter-intuitive to everything for which the Olympics should stand.

Events at the Olympics like synchronized swimming, gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, and diving are all beautiful forms of art that require amazing levels of physical talent, endurance & precision, but beg the question of how exactly is a person supposed to objectively judge art. Maybe judged sports shouldn't be removed from Olympic competition completely, but there needs to be an asterisk after the medals earned in these "sports" or separate medal counts for the sports medals & the artistic medals.

This judge issue appears to be a problem that might only get worse too. At the 2012 Olympic Summer Games in London, both baseball & softball will be removed from the lineup. And the best sport in the world, American football will still be nowhere to be seen. We can only hope.