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Debate:Relationship between Socialism and athletic performance (view source)
Revision as of 01:13, June 27, 2012
, 01:13, June 27, 2012no edit summary
::What I know is you think that, but should perhaps re-read the parts about how America and non-socialist nations are on the ascendancy! Try the "pie" charts....they might be less challenging. Try as hard as you want, you simply cannot disprove Andy's original premise...because the truth will indeed set you free! BTW, RobertE...I did notice your [http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Debate:Relationship_between_Socialism_and_athletic_performance&diff=prev&oldid=758321 edit remark] that you reversed. It shows your real intentions and purpose here. --<big>[[User:TK|'''ṬK''']]</big><sub>/Admin</sub><sup>[[User_Talk:TK|/Talk]]</sup> 05:08, 1 March 2010 (EST)
::What I know is you think that, but should perhaps re-read the parts about how America and non-socialist nations are on the ascendancy! Try the "pie" charts....they might be less challenging. Try as hard as you want, you simply cannot disprove Andy's original premise...because the truth will indeed set you free! BTW, RobertE...I did notice your [http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Debate:Relationship_between_Socialism_and_athletic_performance&diff=prev&oldid=758321 edit remark] that you reversed. It shows your real intentions and purpose here. --<big>[[User:TK|'''ṬK''']]</big><sub>/Admin</sub><sup>[[User_Talk:TK|/Talk]]</sup> 05:08, 1 March 2010 (EST)
==Not Necessarily a Valid Comparison==
It is a well-known fact that the Eastern Bloc nations were cheating by using performance enhancing drugs. This was back when drug testing was primitive and couldn't catch everything. The Communists didn't deserve to do as well as they did, but they did. To some extent this is still going on - North Korea was stripped of two medals in 2008 in Beijing, and five women's soccer players flunked drug tests at the Women's World Cup in 2011, leading to the team being banned for the 2015 competition. At the time, the North Korean women's team was one of the best in the world, along with the Americans. In this respect, the two are fairly equal. But the Americans did it the right way, not by cheating, but by playing fair.
However, comparing Soviet results to Russian results is not particularly accurate, since non-Russian Soviet nations win medals too. Let's look at 2008.
United States 110
Russia 73
At first glance, the Russians/Soviets performance has dropped since 1988, the last games for the Soviets, where it was
Soviet Union 132
USA 94
However, the following SSRs also won medals in 2008:
Ukraine 27
Belarus 19
Georgia 6
Kazakhstan 13
Azerbaijan 7
Uzbekistan 6
Latvia 3
Estonia 2
Lithuania 5
Kyrgystan 2
Tajikistan 2
Armenia 6
Moldova 1
Added together, these are 99 medals, not even including the Russians. Throw in the Russians and you get 172, far more than the USSR total from 1988. Of course, there are a couple dozen more events now then there were then, which may have helped somewhat, but not significantly. All other things being equal, due to the extra events, the USA should have won more medals than it did, though. Those people who point that out to deny the negative correlation are correct in their assertion but wrong in their conclusion. The US, which was already capitalist, gained nothing Olympics-wise from the fall of communism. It went from being capitalist to still being capitalist, which meant there should have been no change, all other things being equal. As we all know, that was not the case. Many nations changed from communist to capitalist, thus improving their athletic performance. The end result was that the US finished lower than they had in previous years, because their capitalist/communist status did not change, while other nations had improved by becoming capitalist.
Also to those who point out China's 2008 performance, every host nation has an unusually good performance. Greece won 16 medals in 2004, when they hosted. In 2008, four years later, they won 4. Also, the only Olympics ever where Greece won more than 16 medals was 1896, which they also hosted. Let's see where China finishes next month and it will be interesting to revisit that. Although China is still communist, they're far less communist than they were twenty years ago. Perhaps becoming "less communist" can help somewhat too? [[User:Gregkochuconn|Gregkochuconn]] 21:13, 26 June 2012 (EDT)