The Olympics Blog » Japan

Photo of the Day: Nagano, Japan

bill — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:55:00 +0000

A pro-Tibet protester in Japan. Photo credit: Toru Hanai/Reuters.

After all the worldwide protests against China’s occupation of Tibet, Beijing has agreed to meet with the Dalai Lama’s representative. Read the report here.

The Olympic Torch in Japan

bill — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:34:00 +0000

The torch is going to be snubbed by Buddhist monks according to the Kyoto News Agency (via GMA).

Kyodo News agency reports that a major Japanese Buddhist temple is refusing to host the Olympic torch relay.

The report says Zenkoji Temple has pulled out of the relay plans, amid speculation that monks there sympathize with anti-Chinese government protesters in Tibet.

The report on Friday follows a series of protests of the torch relay as it has circled the globe over China’s crackdown on anti-government demonstrations in Tibet.

Zenkoji originally was scheduled to be the starting point for the relay in Japan in the mountainous Nagano region.

Richer Countries, More Medals?

bill — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:59:00 +0000

Do we really need a study to tell us that richer countries win more Olympic medals? My mom will tell you that such a study is a waste of resources because the answer will obviously be, “Of course richer countries win more Olympic medals.”

Now, the good folks at the Lingnan University in Hongkong obviously disagree with my mom (re: the usefulness of such study) so they set out to do an “econometric analysis of the Olympic Games“. They whipped out their calculators, pored over Olympic medal records, examined the different countries’ material wealth, did their statistical analysis thing, and came up with the following conclusion:

The results of the study show that population and income do indeed have a substantial effect on the number of Olympic medals won.

There’s really no need to translate that but we will “translate” it anyways because we want to, here it goes: “Richer countries with more people win more Olympic medals.”

So maybe my mom only got it half right. Not all rich countries win more medals. They also have to have more human resources, i.e., athletes, competing for them.

By the way, the really interesting part of the study as far as The Olympian Blog is concerned are the following medal predictions:

* that China will increase its medal haul by 14% in the 2008 Beijing Olympics but it will remain in second place behind the United States

* that Japan and South Korea will have fewer medals compared to their medal harvest in the 2004 Olympic Games

This is interesting because we will soon see in August if the Lingnan U folks got it right. We’ll keep you posted.