world sports

[Trip]

Originally Posted by Rider

I didn't say the NHL was "ours" although it's headquarters is in NYC. My point was that if the US NHL teams didn't allow foreign players the entire NHL would go to shit so I really agree with you on that part. It would water down the league too much.

The other pro sports it doesn't matter because we don't have a huge influx of foreign born athletes in those sports, although it seems the NBA has been getting a lot of European players lately.

The Big Four sports in America (Football, Baseball, Basketball, and Hockey; I don't really count hockey as a big sport cause it's only you northern fools who like that shit, kinda like NASCAR for the south) only make up 2-3 medals depending on if baseball/basketball is in the olympics. They don't have an impact anyway.

Originally Posted by CrazyKell

Fair enough. I kind of went off on a tangent there.

Okay well hypothetically, I think it wouldn't make a lick of difference to the US athletes (unless they were only allowed to train in house), and although there might be *some* effect on other nations....I think it'd be very minimal. Coaches would travel to train.

If the US changed focus from team sports (impossible) and built a fence around their training programs like China, I think you would see a huge difference. The USA right now doesn't really give a damn about the olympics 90% of the time, if there was a drive countrywide to compete like the Chinese, I bet we would see a difference.

Basically, I think Chinese will own both olympics before long. They are doing what Russians did when they were communist.

[CrazyKell]

Originally Posted by Trip

If the US changed focus from team sports (impossible) and built a fence around their training programs like China, I think you would see a huge difference. The USA right now doesn't really give a damn about the olympics 90% of the time, if there was a drive countrywide to compete like the Chinese, I bet we would see a difference.

Basically, I think Chinese will own both olympics before long. They are doing what Russians did when they were communist.

I see your point. I'm not in the US though so I wasn't aware that team sports aren't a big deal.

You do alright in individual medals though no?

[Apoc]

Originally Posted by CrazyKell

I see your point. I'm not in the US though so I wasn't aware that team sports aren't a big deal.

You do alright in individual medals though no?

Think of it though? And this is not a dig on their athletes. But to be conservative, ill say they have 5x the talent pool we do. We each have 8 Gold (and were quite likely to get 2 in curling today), they have 12 silver and twelve bronze. We have 6 silver and three bronze and a shitload of 4ths and 5ths that coulda gone either way. Both countries lost medals that were almost expected, and both countries support athletes in college that compete for their country in the olympics.

In fact, most of the womens hockey team from the USA, come up here play all winter in the Canadian womens pro league.