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What country surprised you the most? Both positive and negative?


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Hello all

What a wonderful games! If we look at the sports competition and medals. For my point I am VERY surprised about how good Denmark managed this year! We god 15 medals!!!! The highest since London 1948!!! And in London 2012, we got 9, and that was also the highest since 1948!!!! And we had different athletes that we had high hopes for, which disappointed. So that we still got 15 medals total, is almost unbelievable! And who can forget Pernille Blume face when she won the 50 m swimming! That and the handball gold is the biggest moment for me, but the road cycling was also very dramatic sport! And silver for Denmark...

But with only 5½ million people in Denmark, and still get 15 medals is hard to understand!

Besides our selve, I´m surprised by New Zealand, they are only 4,5 million, and got a total of 18 medals! Very very impressive!

So what country are you surprised about? positive or negative?

Kindly regards
Hans from Denmark

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Well I have to say France did surprise me a lot! No gold medalists from 2012 (apart from Teddy Riner) got gold again. And yet, we managed to get 42 medals, which is the highest we've ever had since the end of the war. So we bascially had medals where we didn't expect them. And with the start of the Games, which was quite bad, we didn't expect that at all. I'm very proud of Team France! :)

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My eyes were glued to Gymnastics so I'll just give my thoughts on that -

I'd say I was most surprised by Japan. No one expected them to finish in 4th place during the team event. Highest finish in ages. Maybe we can see them take home a medal in Tokyo. GB did awesome also! Whitlock taking home 2 golds, Tinkler taking home Britains 2nd ever medal won by a female gymnast & Wilson/Smith taking medals also.

I was disappointed with how the Nigerian team was organised. Especially when they were being told last minute that they are going to pay their way to games by themselves. Many of the athletes had to resort to GoFundMe in order to get to Rio.

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9 minutes ago, MissEurasia said:

My eyes were glued to Gymnastics so I'll just give my thoughts on that -

I'd say I was most surprised by Japan. No one expected them to finish in 4th place during the team event. Highest finish in ages. Maybe we can see them take home a medal in Tokyo. GB did awesome also! Whitlock taking home 2 golds, Tinkler taking home Britains 2nd ever medal won by a female gymnast & Wilson/Smith taking medals also.

I was disappointed with how the Nigerian team was organised. Especially when they were being told last minute that they are going to pay their way to games by themselves. Many of the athletes had to resort to GoFundMe in order to get to Rio.

Talking of gymnastics - did I miss something or has Romania suddenly vanished off the map for that sport? They used to dominate women's gymnastics for such a long time!

Positive surprises: The United Kingdom scoring second. Bit of a satisfying feeling to have two democracies leading the medals table for once - though I'm sure China will pump as much money as possible to retake #2 spot during Tokyo 2020 - especially bearing the historic rivalry with Japan in mind. New Zealand did very well for a country its size and population! Fiji's gold medal was a highlight. Yes, Denmark did really well - and Jamaica's athletes did very well for a nation their size too. Japan's performance bodes well for 2020! Puerto Rico winning its first gold medal was great, even though it was a German player who got defeated in the tennis finals. Canada had an awesome games, if I'm not mistaken - so kudos to all Canadians!

Negative surprises and results: India actually regressed to a silver and bronze each (down from its previous medal haul in London by four). However, quite a bit of potential, what with several fourth-place finishes. Much work will need to be done in order for India to become an even average sports nation. Also, what happened to Australia's swimmers?

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Just now, plusbrilliantsexploits said:

Talking of gymnastics - did I miss something or has Romania suddenly vanished off the map for that sport? They used to dominate women's gymnastics for such a long time!

Positive surprises: The United Kingdom scoring second. Bit of a satisfying feeling to have two democracies leading the medals table for once - though I'm sure China will pump as much money as possible to retake #2 spot during Tokyo 2020 - especially bearing the historic rivalry with Japan in mind. New Zealand did very well for a country its size and population! Fiji's gold medal was a highlight. Yes, Denmark did really well - and Jamaica's athletes did very well for a nation their size too. Japan's performance bodes well for 2020! Puerto Rico winning its first gold medal was great, even though it was a German player who got defeated in the tennis finals. Canada had an awesome games, if I'm not mistaken - so kudos to all Canadians!

Negative surprises and results: India actually regressed to a silver and bronze each (down from its previous medal haul in London by four). However, quite a bit of potential, what with several fourth-place finishes. Much work will need to be done in order for India to become an even average sports nation. Also, what happened to Australia's swimmers?

Romania are a legit mess. They failed to qualify for Rio at the Worlds last year and I think they finished second to last in the Test Event this year. Catalina Ponor was sent as the sole representative for the women and she finished 7th in the beam finals :( I hope they up their game next year because they have some promising Jr's and Ponor is looking to stick around until Tokyo while Iordache and Bulimar should be healthy and recovered from injury.

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POSITIVES

For me home New Zealand battling our way out of a bitter disappointing first week of just bad luck...To stonking it in the second giving us our highest medal count, 18, and continuing the upward trend since 2000's disaster...The girls beat the boys in medals 11 v 7. And picked up a shared BdeC Sportsmanship medal as well. Yeap happy to spend more tax dollars on Sports as it will cut the spend on healthcare.

The overall performance by the Anglosphere/Commonwealth nations proves their love of sports. 1&2 on top the others scattered in the top 20.

Great Britain...what a standout! Up beside USA.

The "new" medal nations including Fiji! At last a South Pacific medal that isn't NZ.

NEGATIVE

Russia...probably a more realistic count but still tarnished forever. (Along with Belarus and any country with -stan at the end of their name.)

Azerbaijan... Really? I suppose if you have the money...

Mongolia... That Wrestling performance was disturbing.

India... Why does the secondmost population fail to perform.

GERMANY! We'll meet again on the Lawn Hockey field...oh yes, we'll meet again!

Australian Media... Don't be so f***in mean! Still a great result and a signal to start the next generation off especially if you want Brisbane 2028 to happen.

World Media...Yeah the panic was overplayed in the build up. The village was a little under prepared, the venues not full...but no one died and Rio didn't do too badly in difficult circumstances.

Edited by Alexjc
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having just done the sweep, where i paired countries by expected medals into tiers and then randomly assigned them to members, i can say there were a few surprises. here are the very random observations.

GB did well -- at the expense of germany

France did well -- at the expense of australia

ukraine? not so good. nor poland or china or turkey (gold medals).

belgium and argentina on the other hand exceeded my expectations significantly.

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4 hours ago, plusbrilliantsexploits said:

Also, what happened to Australia's swimmers?

Simple. The most highly fancied ones choked. As they admit themselves.

1 hour ago, kraussie-kraussie-kraussie said:

France did well -- at the expense of australia

Actually, apart from the swimming where Team USA put us in our place, team GB was our bogeyman. Like in London, they snatched rowing and cycling from our grasping fingers. We were only down slightly on our medals and standing from London, but way down on predictions and expectations.

Elsewhere

China surprised. Surely everyone expected them as second on the table. From reports they were dumbstruck and deflated themselves. But which other country would consider 26 gold and 70 total a disappointment? I'd expect we'll see a big bounce back in Tokyo (and they'll probably be determined to do it at the expense of Japan).

Brazil's probably neutral. Pretty good showing for them. Possibly wanted more as a host. Nowhere near fail, pretty respectable indeed, but not out-of-the-ballpark spectacular. Sorta like their games.

Kenya seem back at their best (though Faster and I were arguing the toss on that in back chatter during the games).

Russia hard to judge. Is that better than was expected from a stripped down team? Or did the ones they were banned from not matter that much anyway?

GB was of course the standout over-performer. Others I was pleasantly surprised to see rise were France, Italy and the Netherlands. Didn't notice Denmark (but I have a Sweden bias when it comes to watching the nordics) - good to hear they performed well though.

We just always expect to see USA at the top. But I gather this was a super-top by their standards. At the expense of all, I suppose.

Edited by Sir Rols
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For me I was most happy with New Zealand's performance - our most ever medals at an Olympic Games - 18 for us was a fantastic achievement. 

I loved seeing Fiji win their first ever Olympic medal - a gold in the sevens. It was so coon to see how Fiji reacted to their win. Its what the Olympics are all about. 

I enjoyed seeing Brazil win the mens volleyball and football. They will take huge satisfaction winning those team events!

Team GB had an amazing games, backing up from four years ago was huge! Being placed second on the table was huge!

Negatives:

Australia were poor and received a lot of negative press. I thought they would have improved on four years ago. 29 medals for them would have been a disappointment for them.

India: the second most populous nation doing so poorly! 

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Our peformance at the Olympics was decent. We didn't got the gold like in London but still we got a couple of bronce medals and a silver. Since LA'84 we didn't got three medals at an Olympics. However I think the government needs to stop selling so much smoke and get to work on improving our athletes instead of pampering them.

Ruben Limardo was for me the biggest dissapointment. He was the Olympic champion in fencing at London and World Champion, only to lose miserably during the Round of 16 against a rival he beat in 2012. But I have big hopes for Yulimar Rojas in Tokyo 2020, probably the biggest favorite to achieve gold.

Puerto Rico and Fiji were some of the most pleasant surprises on these games, and how they finally managed to grab gold for their countries. It's fun how Rugby made its debut on these games and the pacific country finally grabbed a medal, and a gold of all things. I was also pleased with GB achieving second place. Congratulations for your effort! It must be a very proudful moment having finally beaten China on the medal tally after all these years. These athletes surely have a bright future in front of them.

Despite the annoying boorish behavior of some of the crowd, the gold medals achieved by Brazil on these games were more than deserved, and they finally achieved their long dreamed gold in football and managed to dissipate the ghosts of the humillation of 2014. Here's hoping they finally build another dream team like 2002.

India, as always, the biggest dissapointment of these games. They really need to get working on  sports in their nation. Also what Lochte did was very dissapointing and sad. Ruining your reputation for such a silly thing when you shown so much promise.

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The U.S. winning the medal count was never in doubt, but I was legitimately surprised that they ended up winning 121 medals.  Coming into the Games, I thought they might struggle to win 100.  At last year's World Championships, the U.S. swimmers won only 23 medals (and only 19 in Olympic events), and the U.S. track and field team won only 18 medals.  I certainly did not expect the U.S. to have its best-ever performance in both sports, winning 33 medals in swimming and 32 medals in track and field.

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2 hours ago, Barcelona_'92 said:

The U.S. winning the medal count was never in doubt, but I was legitimately surprised that they ended up winning 121 medals.  Coming into the Games, I thought they might struggle to win 100.  At last year's World Championships, the U.S. swimmers won only 23 medals (and only 19 in Olympic events), and the U.S. track and field team won only 18 medals.  I certainly did not expect the U.S. to have its best-ever performance in both sports, winning 33 medals in swimming and 32 medals in track and field.

With swimming Phelps didn't swim at the world championships because of his suspension from his DUI so that probably brought down the medal count on butterfly and relay events. 

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  • 9 months later...

Late post but I will say:

Positive (By results):

1. Great Britain - Overperformance indeed

2. China - Mostly for the diversification of medals in other sports.

3. New Zealand

4. France

5. Denmark

Special mention: Brazil - Maybe not the huge surprise as expected, but this is Brazil's best result at Olympics and was a really respectable result with few great surprises (Arthur Nory, Thiago)

Negative:

1. India - They can't get Olympics with these poor results every Olympics.

2. Australia

3. Mexico - My country is in deep trouble even with few suprises

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