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  • Slovenia hammers Armenia in Medals Per Capita

    The Los Angeles Times
    Aug 17 2008



    Slovenia hammers Armenia in Medals Per Capita
    2:41 PM, August 17, 2008


    Through eyeballs bloodshot from hours of trivial long division, the
    world's lonely and frivolous Medals Per Capita scholars will look at
    you and share with you an ancient Medals Per Capita adage:

    Fear Slovenia.

    Oh, Slovenia will bring along that dauntingly low population of
    2,007,711. Oh, Slovenia will get some medals. And oh yeah, Slovenians
    have a demonstrable sturdiness.

    Through history, they've come under the rule of the Roman Empire, the
    Byzantine Empire, the Republic of Venice, the Duchy of Carantania, the
    Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburg Monarchy, the Austrian Empire, the
    State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
    Slovenes, Germans and Italians during World War II and the Socialist
    Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

    You think they can't handle the hammer throw?

    Now, as a pursuit, the hammer throw can seem alien, inscrutable and
    marginal. It can make you wonder just how many dangerous things
    they're going to let people throw for medals in the Olympics.

    But on Sunday night in Beijing, the hammer throw turned monumentally,
    epically, phantasmagorically pivotal when Primoz Kozmus won it and
    lifted Slovenia to No. 1 on the most vital, cogent, counter-snobbish
    Olympic ranking, Medals Per Capita.

    It brought the first track-or-field gold medal ever to the gorgeous
    little kumquat of a nation next to Italy on the Adriatic. It gave
    Slovenia four medals for 2,007,711 people, or one for every 501,927
    Slovenians. It gave Slovenia a noticeable array of medals thus far --
    one judo, one swimming, one shooting, one field.

    And it finally dislodged the mighty Armenians from the summit.

    Medals Per Capita should take this opportunity, then, to salute the
    Armenians, who tenaciously held the No. 1 slot for five long Olympic
    days, wringing five medals from 2,968,586 people to fend off hordes of
    challengers while forcing us to learn rarefied factoids.

    Did you know that Armenia is the smallest of the former Soviet
    Republics, that its currency is the dram or that it has a bunch of
    extinct volcanoes? You do now, because of Armenian prowess in
    weightlifting (three medals) and wrestling (two).

    In fact, that five-day reign almost certainly will prove persuasive to
    the Medals Per Capita Hall of Fame voters.

    Sorry, voter.

    In MPC minutiae from Sunday:

    -- If you saw Jamaican women sweep gold, silver and silver (dead heat)
    in the women's 100 meters, and you instantly thought of how that
    might ransack the Medals Per Capita standings, well, that proves
    you have no life whatsoever.

    It also could mean you're trivially observant, as the
    Frazer-Stewart-Simpson domination rocketed Jamaica from No. 24 all the
    way to No. 3 with a glowing MPC rating of one medal per 701,083.

    -- The Trans-Tasman tussle, so gripping on Saturday, remained on in
    earnest -- Australia No. 4, New Zealand No. 5 -- even though
    Australia hoarded four more medals to reach 29 while New Zealand
    got zero to stay at five. The Australians had to be scratching
    their heads and wondering why they'd reproduced with such relative
    abandon. In their defense, they do have a lot more land.

    -- In an Olympic story that defies all known worldly sporting belief,
    Great Britain is kicking serious tail in Beijing. It has gotten so
    serious that some columnists were comparing Saturday's nine-medal
    haul to the golden day of July 30, 1966, when England won the World
    Cup at Wembley Stadium. Then Sunday continued almost apace, with a
    medal (bronze) in men's gymnastics, unprecedented for a nation long
    thought too gorged on beer to navigate a pommel horse. A haul of 17
    medals in two days brought a Very Great Britain to 24 medals and
    25th place, an outstanding MPC showing for a big population.

    The top 10:
    (country, medal tally, MPC)

    1. Slovenia (4) - one medal per every 501,927
    2. Armenia (5) - 593,717
    3. Jamaica (4) - 701,083
    4. Australia (29) - 710,374
    5. New Zealand (5) - 834,692
    6. Belarus (10) - 968,576
    7. Trinidad & Tobago (1) - 1,047,366
    8. Norway (4) - 1,161,114
    9. Estonia (1) - 1,307,605
    10. Slovakia (4) - 1,311,187

    Selected Others:

    11. Denmark (4) - one medal per every 1,371,180
    25. Great Britain (25) - 2,437,756
    26. France (25) - 2,562,311
    35. Germany (21) - 3,922,359
    39. Singapore (1) - 4,608,167
    40. United States (65) - 4,674,225
    41. Canada (7) - 4,744,670
    44. Japan (20) - 6,364,420
    46. Spain (6) - 6,748,508
    56. China (61) - 21,804,010

    -- Chuck Culpepper

    Culpepper is a Times contributor.

    Photo: Primoz Kozmus competes on Sunday during the men's hammer throw final at the National Stadium during the 2008 Beijing Games. Kozmus, of Slovenia, won the gold medal. Credit: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images

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