II don’t know about you, but what always particularly interests me about the Youth Olympic Games around the world (well, Claudia Pechstein is also back in Beijing for the eighth time, if I’m not mistaken), so what particularly interests me interested in these olympics of young and old, this is the medal table. Of course there are also other interesting national rankings, for example in relation to corruption, human rights violations or restrictions on freedom of expression and the press, but I prefer the sporty medal table, it doesn’t spoil the good mood and shows in no time at all whether a country is super sporty and super fit and overall it’s really great.
Or is it just lagging behind. Of course, it’s hard to say which is the greatest country of all at the moment. But it’s probably China. Although: At the last winter games in South Korea, the Chinese only took 16th place in the national ranking. Not so great. But according to the will of the political leadership, that will change fundamentally in the coming years.
Not only that the Chinese are the first nation in a city to host the Winter Olympics after the Summer Games. Even what the pure numbers show, the country’s rise to the top of all medal tables is certainly unbearable, excuse me: to be stopped. 250 million winter sports enthusiasts is the modest goal in the realm of the many, and our Bavarian and Thuringian elite will be a little behind in terms of numbers.
Ahead in all disciplines
In fact, it is likely to be a lot more difficult in this country to put 250 million Germans in bobsleds or on skis, with or without weapons, it doesn’t matter. This is not only due to the comparatively meager population in our country, but also to the fact that the detachment does not really work, apart from a few top winter sports professionals who also have their contact persons and financiers at customs, the police or find the army. But you can’t even send every customs officer in this country down the ice track so that he can permanently move us up the medal table. Of course, the future looks bleak against 250 million.
If I see it correctly, China not only threatens to overtake us in winter sports and will soon do so in the medal table. No, the country is already far ahead of us in the important new Olympic disciplines, as athletes, officials and journalists from all over the world who have traveled to the Olympics can confirm from experience these days.
The national ranking in temperature measurement, in app espionage, the formation of bubbles with fencing, quarantine with barracks, the political instrumentalization of sport, the ruthless gigantic and environmental destruction, cuddling with the IOC, these are just a few disciplines in which China is already at the top. These disciplines do not yet appear in the Olympic medal table. But it’s only a matter of time.