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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