[Strutz]

Canadaka wrote:

The 3 most expensive things were the Canada line, sea to sky highway and athletes village. All 3 would have been done anyway, maybe just at a slower pace.
And i'm confident Vancouver will get back all the money and more from the loan it made for the athletes village.

Its not like we are friggin Sochi, building everything from scratch and having no need for it afterwards. We needed a mass transit line to the airport and richmond, the sea to sky highway BADLY needed to be redone. There is demand and population to support venues like the richmond oval which will be tured into a rec centre.

Agreed Trev. The Canada Line was long overdue. I remember back in '86 when the Expo line was completed they were going to do the Vancouver-Richmond-YVR one next. That got put on the back burner to instead expand the Expo line to Surrey, then the Millennium Line was built. The Sea to Sky highway has also been waiting years for improvemnet and it's about time it got done too. Yes, both of these projects would have gotten done anyway, I'm glad there was the incentive of the Olympics to speed it up. Waiting a few more years would have just cost even more money.

The Richmond Oval will be quite the rec centre from what I've read over the last couple of years in the local papers. It will include a couple of ice rinks, basketball courts, a fitness centre and more. People have been buying memberships already for the fitness centre which is apparently excellent and of course comes at a high membership cost, which doesn't seem to bother some. I'm not sure how long it will take for all the conversions to be done but it'll be interesting to see once completed.

Of course there will a debt in the end, I fully expect it. To what extent...who knows.

[herbie]

Fairness ratio: G=3 S=2 B=1 /millions

Canada 14-7-5 :61 pop millions /34 1.79
USA: 9-15-13 :70 /304 0.23
Germ: 10-13-7 :63 /82 0.77

I'd say we did pretty freaking good.
My ratios say we cleaned their goddam clocks.
CANADA KICKS ASS!!!

[Psudo]

If you divide by population, you've gotta compare yourself with the rest of the list, too. Norway's population is 4.7 million, and their medals are 9 gold, 8 silver, and 6 bronze. That's (9*3+8*2+6)/4.7 = 10.4 They kicked Canada, Germany, and the USA's collective butt.

[JJ]

Canadaka wrote:

WE WIN TEH OLYMPICS!

All the media organizations use total medal count, but according to IOC via Wikipedia:

Quote:

The medal table is based on information provided by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and is consistent with IOC convention in its published medal tables. By default, the table is ordered by the number of gold medals the athletes from a nation have won (in this context, a nation is an entity represented by a National Olympic Committee). The number of silver medals is taken into consideration next and then the number of bronze medals. If nations are still tied, equal ranking is given and they are listed alphabetically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Winte ... edal_table

But if you look at the official 2010 IOC page, the default tally actually has it organized by total medal count. http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-medals/

You can play with the widget to tweak the rankings in any order you want, even by most bronzes won. So I am not sure who the Wiki people are citing. The IOC, officially, does not have a position on who "wins" the Olympics, though.

[bootlegga]

Canadaka wrote:

ShepherdsDog wrote:

Well the party's over, but now the bill comes due. This will be extremely sobering.

I don't think so, I think the games will make a profit or close to it. Of course it all depends on what you factor in and i'm sure everyone will have a different formula. There are many unknown and long lasting factors, many that can't be assigned a dollar value.

The 3 most expensive things were the Canada line, sea to sky highway and athletes village. All 3 would have been done anyway, maybe just at a slower pace.
And i'm confident Vancouver will get back all the money and more from the loan it made for the athletes village.

Its not like we are friggin Sochi, building everything from scratch and having no need for it afterwards. We needed a mass transit line to the airport and richmond, the sea to sky highway BADLY needed to be redone. There is demand and population to support venues like the richmond oval which will be tured into a rec centre.

I've said it before and will keep on saying it, if you don't think the Olympics make a difference to your city, just compare Edmonton and Calgary. The city that had the m and is relatively well known outside Canada, and the other isn't. The city that had them also got a boatload of funding for infrastructure and as a result, has an LRT/road system that Edmontonians envy.

[martin14]

Freakinoldguy wrote:

Here's some sobering facts that they don't want you to know:

Some numbers from past Games:


CALGARY, 1988: Debt: $910 million

funny how this urban myth of Calgary being successful continues to be believed.

[Hyack]

No matter how you look at who won, most medals in total or most gold medals won, there is one fact that remains. With Canada's 14 gold medals we can now claim:

A) The most gold medals won by the host city or country of a Winter Olympics. The previous record was 10, held by Norway in 1994 and Salt Lake city in 2002.

B) The most gold medals won by any country in a single Winter Olympics. The previous record was 13, held by the Soviet Union in 1976 in Innsbruck.

So, whatever, as far as I'm concerned these were still the best Winter Olympics I have ever seen. Although, I can't go along with Steven Harper's view of them being the best ever games.

[Psudo]

Objectively, Canada won. It was awesome.

[Faye]

martin14 wrote:

300 million people = 37 medals

82 million = 30 medals

30 million = 26 medals


do the math

and both Hockey Gold
and most golds by any country in any Winter Olympics




not bad any way you slice it

Couldn't agree more!

[Psudo]

Raw Rankings:
Total Medals Ranking: USA (37), Germany (30), Canada (26)
Weighted Medals (Gold = 3, Silver = 2, Bronze = 1): USA(70), Germany(63), Canada(61)
Gold Medals: Canada(14), Germany(10), tie (Norway(9) and USA(9))

Per Capita Rankings:
Total Medals/population (in millions): Norway(4.82), Austria(1.92), Slovakia(1.47)
Weighted Medals/population: Norway(10.27), Austria(3.6), Slovakia(2.94)
Gold Medals/population: Norway(1.89), Switzerland(0.79), Sweden(0.54)

Composite Rankings:
1st Place in the most above categories: Norway(3), USA(2), Canada(1)
Most Appearances in Above Rankings: 4-way tie(Norway(4) and Canada(4) and USA(4) and Germany(4))
Above categories, weighted: Norway(10), three-way tie(Canada(8) and Germany(8) and USA(8)), Austria(4)

If you're going to look at population comparison for the top 3, why not look at it for all nations? Otherwise you're really short-changing Norway, who did really amazingly well per capita.

The USA still beats Canada at the weighted total medals rankings even if you make Gold Medals worth 4 points each rather than three (x2 each rank rather than +1).

I've got the data in a spreadsheet. If you want a copy, I can e-mail it.

(edited for typos and clarifications)

[DerbyX]

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/02/ ... power.html

In addition to the various ways to add up the medals this site is pointing out that most of the medals we won are in sports that weren't around a few decades ago.

Apparently Canada simply invented a bunch of sports for the Olympics so we could win more medals.

A lot of people seemed just so pissed off that Canada didn't graciously lose.

[Mr_Canada]

I personally think it's appropriate and important that Canada be the Power House of the Winter Olympics.

I don't think it was ever right that we used to be good at getting 4th. It feels right that Canada has the most Gold in this, and we've got some more work to do still. Then we can shut up all these people dedicated to opposing the idea that Canada did great in these Olympics.

We should be the best. It just sounds right. "Canada, for the 46th Winter Olympics in a row, has a record number of medals, utterly destroying their competition..." See, doesn't that just roll off your tongue?

[Strutz]

Check out some of these numbers...

http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-news/n/news/the-vancouver-2010-olympic-winter-games-by-the-numbers_297556Ko.html

[Brenda]

Cool! Love that list of stats

[Mr_Canada]

Holy crap, those are some large numbers!

Good find,