It's the first standoff in summer games history and it took a nail-biting U.S. women's basketball win, in the final action of Paris 2024, to make happen.
I think it’s a stretch to call international competition “political.” But if you insist on doing that, then it’s silly to claim that they are supposed to be apolitical when every athlete competes under a flag.
The ancient Olympic Games was literally the biggest and most important political event in ancient Greece(and during the hellenistic period, in the "World").
Everyone gathered there, wars were temporary suspended so if you had anything important to announce, you did it there. And thats why alliances were often announced there, alongside with shitload of backdoor deals and politicking.
Almost twice the number of silvers too. If you do like gold is three points, silver is two and bronze is one, the US ends up with a solid 20% margin of victory.
Medal counts are retarded. The US sent, what, over 500 athletes? Show me a small country who sends an amateur to get on the podium. That means far more.
Large countries like to boast that their absolute number is bigger, it's a tale as old as time.
If you really want to make comparisons (and I'd argue it's really not that important) you should probably look at medals per capita, or medals per athlete sent. Obviously that gets a bit distorted with countries with small population, but I think it's a more valuable number.
Being able to train that many gold medal athletes is still a worthy boast though. I'd rather countries compete on metrics like this rather than threaten each other with war
For people who care about medal count (btw not me) it’s the whole point though to show that you are the biggest with the most people and the most resources. Not that you made the most of what you had or that you have the purest spirit.
Raw industrial capacity and soldier count have decided wars after all, so showing you can amass the most / biggest can hardly be said to be an empty boast. It’s a threat, really.
Technically the US (the country) gets +2 bronzes (Puerto Rico) and China (the country) gets +2 golds and +2 bronzes (Hong Kong)... but this whole comparison is stupid.