Soviet heritage in Olympic medal count

Now when the Olympics are over the British media are entertaining themselves by making different medal ratings. They are extremely proud that Britain ranks 3rd in the total gold medal count. Perhaps in an attempt to raise the national team to the top of the list they are trying different kinds of medal counts. In particular, the Guardian decided to use a geopolitical approach taking into account countries’ GDP, population number, national team size, and only then the number of medals they won. But it turned out that this sophisticated method works better in favor of Russia. US expert Joshua Keating decided to remember the Soviet Union. According to his calculations, the former Soviet republics together won 163 medals in London. Partially these medals can really be regarded as Soviet medals because after 21 years since the break up of the USSR the sport traditions in Russia and other 14 former Soviet republics have not changed, Andrei Mitkov, chief editor and the Ves Sport (“All sport”) information agency says.

"Currently the Russian national team does not have any athletes who were brought up under the Soviet system. We saw the last athletes of the Soviet school at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. But the coaches of the Russian team are those, who established themselves as professionals in the times of the USSR. In this respect our success in the Olympics in London is the achievement of the Soviet sport school. We should respect these people who continue bringing up new champions. Sport experts predict that the division of sport schools of the post-Soviet republics will be completed by the 2020 Olympics. By that time many athletes who won at 2004 and 2008 Olympics will be working as coaches. But in any case the mechanism of medal count will stay the same in 2020."

For politicians the Olympic Games have always been one of the ways to demonstrate power. Attempts to link the number of medals won by the athletes with countries’ GDP are not a coincidence. These indicators are considered to be inter-related. If a country can afford spending money on sport development it means that its economy is doing fine.