Better idea is to go 'head hunting'.
Oz such a lucky country, great lifestyle. Convince a dozen or so o/s good potential gold medal winners and go on an import drive. I'm sure some of the big sponsors would get involved :smile:

Getting off the forum subject matter Mr J,but if Australia could support over 60 million people at the standard we are accustomed to,then that is what our population would be.
If not,maybe the Government could redirect some of the Sports revenue funding to the welfare budget.

Excellent idea whiterhino. Go on a recruitment drive!

Don’t forget to include coaches / trainers on the list.

Channel 7's Sunrise program puts up what they call the 'real' medal tally based on population size. At the moment it's:
1 Australia
2 New Zealand
3 Greece
4 Norway

As for that idea of 'buying' gold medals, I am all for champion athletes coming here if it's because this is where they want to live, but we should never go so far as paying them. I was extremely pleased with the result of the womens 5000m yesterday. The favourite was an Ethiopian woman who had been basically bought by a Turkish company to go and compete for Turkey and win them a gold medal. She was the world record holder but after leading early, she collapsed and finished 12th, while the gold medal was won by another Ethiopian. Justice!

As far as I'm concerned, there's no doubt that a larger population gives you more chance of unearthing a champion athlete. The Americans have 280 million people, so they obviously stand a greater chance of producing someone special than we do with our 20 million. They can also have much greater depth across a whole lot of sports.

Out of all the countries involved, the USA would be competitive at the largest number of sports, but we're probably second as far as that is concerned. Take the Baseball for example. We beat Japan to get to the final. Now, Japan has a population about 6 or 7 times ours and Baseball is basically their number one sport, while it's a very minor sport here. Beating Japan at Baseball should be just like Japan beating Australia at Cricket. We'll be playing Cuba in the final, and again they are just so incredibly strong at Baseball, so it's hard to see us winning the gold. Silver would still be a great performance though.


[ This Message was edited by: sportznut on 2004-08-25 09:50 ]

Does anyone rate Pitmann in the 400m hurdles
I think she'll get the bronze behind the greek and russian in that order
cheers

Love your workz sportz.

tab sportsbet are betting $1.90 the quinella for the russian and greek girls. I reckon its money for jam

The tall russian girlie didnt seem to be out of puff the other day (pulled up well ) but I had a patriotic $6 on Jana at $11.50 with B/F its supposed to be on at 4.55am our time tomorrow.... spose ill have to get up and watch it now my freights gunna be running round

I feel really sorry for Loretta Harrop. That was terrible watching that. Apparently, the winner is going to get a million bucks and a house from the Austrian government! No wonder she finished so damn fast!!!

I must say that I think the Greek runner's performance is a little bit dubious. I know that athletes can perform above expectations in front of their home fans, but she was almost unheard of until a few days ago.

Sportz, heard yesterday when the aussies beat japan in the baseball that the japanese team salary was $100 million while ours was $300,000 so it goes to show money isnt everything.