How Much Money Do Olympians Make? | London 2012

Man, American gold medalist Aaron Peirsol (100 meters backstroke) is internet-famous. He is the first Olympian I googled who’s got at least three fansites dedicated to him: Aaron Peirsol Online, APO News, and Aaron Peirsol from which I took the image below.

What about Michael Phelps? He’s got his official site and only one fansite. Hah! Take that, Michael. You may have more medals but Aaron appears to have more dedicated fans.

Photo sources: Daylife and Aaron Peirsol fansite

What do you think of this? And what were these guys thinking? If they were looking for a way to make the otherwise friendly Chinese fans unfriendly, then they sure found a pretty good way to do it.

For context, this is an pre-Olympic Games advertisement for a courier company. Whoever conceptualized this ad deserves to be fired for any of the following reasons: a) racism, b) outright stupidity, and c) cultural insensitivity and cluelessness.

Photo source: NY Times

Hah. Didn’t I tell you earlier that the art of medal biting lives on in the Olympics? Here’s the China’s synchronized divers Kai Qin and Wang Feng. Kai is biting his gold to test if it is authentic.

Seems like the Chinese divers are really going to win all the golds in diving, no?

Photo source: Nick Laham/Beijing2008

I’m sure Germany‘s Alexander Grimm, gold medalist in the Olympic Kayak K1, isn’t the first one to bite his gold medal in Beijing but this is the first photo I saw of a medal biter. It’s good to know that the good old tradition of Olympic medal biting is alive and well and won’t go the way of the dodo.

But why do athletes bite their medals? Apparently to test their authenticity. The good guys at Slate Magazine will tell you however that the Olympic gold medals aren’t really made of gold but are made of gold-plated silver.

Photo source: shaun botterill/beijing2008

Expect NBC and other U.S. media outlets to downplay the fact that the U.S. is lagging behind China in the gold medal race by focusing on the total number of medals.

Here’s what it looks like at the NBC website:
And here’s what the medal race looks like according to media outlets from other parts of the world. From ABC-Australia:

From the BBC:
From the Canadian Broadcasting Co:
From xinhuanet:
It is telling that only the NBC is focusing on the total number of medals rather than the gold medals won. The Olympics isn’t halfway yet, and the U.S. has a very good chance of surpassing China in the gold medal count, but this “creative counting” is ridiculous. I wonder what NBC would do if the top two is reversed, that is, that the U.S. has more golds but China has more medals overall.

Anyways, what do the gods of teh internets, i.e., Google, say about the matter? Well, the gods have spoken and they’re counting based on the gold medals won. But then maybe they’re doing it because they would still want to be in the good graces of Beijing. You know, kind of like when they agreed to censor websites in China.

Update: Thanks to our anonymous commenter who added this link to a Wall Street Journal article which addresses this issue. The article states that this U.S.-ROTW (rest of the world) divide in how medals are counted is historical. So I may be wrong in my earlier assumption that NBC is doing this only because the U.S. isn’t leading the race for gold medals.