MONGOLIA THE NEXT RISING STAR IN MEDALS PER CAPITA LIST

Los Angeles Times
5:38 PM, August 14, 2008
CA

Medals Per Capita adores getting all snooty at the snooty big countries
and lavishing attention on the chronically overlooked and, in that
vein, will take this opportunity to salute to the hilt one Mongolia.

Now, the proper noun "Mongolia" doesn’t tend to come up in day-to-day
American dinner conversation, but Medals Per Capita aspires to change
that by announcing that after Thursday’s results in Beijing, Mongolia
barged from No. 10 clear to No. 3 in the real rankings of the Olympics.

These rankings, of course, represent a rational, prudent, authentic
antidote to the thoughtless, sloppy, phony Medals Table, which simply
lists medals won and calls it a shiftless day. The top of the Medals
Table features some sort of fracas between China and the United States,
blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, plying standard ignorance to ignore that it’s
a lot more commendable to wring two Olympic medals from a population
of 2.9 million (Mongolia) than to get, oh, 35 from 1.3 billion (China)
or 34 from 303 million (United States).

Those "big two" are having some sort of snit because one side’s
gymnasts seem quite possibly 11 years old, while at least both have
ample agreeable weather — one even has a California in it — while
Mongolia, now…

Mongolians reside on soil seldom arable and in cold so remorseless
that Ulan Bator finishes No. 1 in the World’s Coldest Capital City
(WCCC) standings, so they would be 2,996,081 of the most rugged,
fibrous human beings on Earth, starting with Tuvshinbayar Naidan.

Naidan, a former wrestler, evidently threw a bunch of people around
the judo rink, reaped his nation’s first-ever gold medal and said to
reporters, "There are no words that can describe my happiness."

Medals Per Capita would like to agree, given MPC’s chronic fondness
for the sparsely populated. Why, Mongolia would be the most sparsely
populated independent country on Earth, 2,996,081 residing in space
roughly the size of Alaska, earning a description from Reuters as
"the windswept Central Asian nation," yet forging a glistening MPC
of 1,498,041.

That placed the Mongolians just behind the No. 2 Australians with all
their flip-flops and cute animals and swimming prowess, even while
both trail a gathering Armenian dynasty that’s getting serious here.

Armenia, another country of 2.9 million, coming off zero medals
in Athens that followed one in Sydney and two in Atlanta, suddenly
has hoarded four bronzes, the latest from Greco-Roman wrestler Yuri
Patrikeev in the 120-kg event. It romped to its third straight day of
MPC throne-sitting, and you could feel the entire MPC board shudder
— or at least I could — by a classic MPC intimidation that lowered
Armenia’s MPC from a dreamy 989,529 to a celestial 742,147.

The top 10 (with a special nod to Cuba, which finished third in Athens
MPC and is getting noisy in Beijing):

1. Armenia (4) – 742,147 2. Australia (16) – 1,287,554 3. Mongolia (2)
– 1,498,041 4. Georgia (3) – 1,543,614 5. Switzerland (4) – 1,895,380
6. Cuba (6) – 1,903,992 7. Slovenia (1) – 2,007,711 8. Azerbaijan
(4) – 2,044,429 9. The Netherlands (7) – 2,377,902 10. Hungary (4)
– 2,482,729

Selected Others:

15. South Korea (16) – 3,077,053 22. France (15) – 4,270,519 23. Italy
(13) – 4,472,717 34. United States (34) – 8,936,019 36. Russia (14)
– 10,050,150 40. Spain (2) – 20,245,526 43. China (35) – 38,001,274
46. Brazil (4) – 47,977,146 50. Mexico (1) – 109,955,400 52. India
(1) – 1,147,995,898

Check the first-day listings, led by Australia, here. And further
updates here and here.

–Chuck Culpepper

Culpepper is a contributor to The Times.