Aussies Australian Prospects for London 2012

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Best case scenario... in terms of gold:
3x Sailing gold
- Tom Slingsby has a large lead in the Laser
- Jensen & Outteridge currently leading and favourites in the 49er
- Belcher & Page currently leading and favourites in the 470 on the back of three consecutive wins. The Brits are right there though, and bound to edge us given how these olympics have gone.
- Currently undefeated and favourites in the women's elliot through group stage. However, anything can now happen in the knockout stage.

2x Cycling gold
- Willoughby and Buchanan currently ranked 1 & 2 in the world respectively. As much a raffle as any in the BMX races though.
- Glenn O'Shea and Anna Meares not without a chance in the Omnium and sprint respectively. Even Perkins??

Sally Pearson gold
Kookaburra's gold
Women's water polo gold

1x unexpected gold
- Steve Hooker
- Edwina Tops-Alexander - Equestrian
- Murray Stewart/ Mens K-4- Kayaking
- Ken Wallace - Kayaking
- Hockeyroos
- Matt Mitcham
- Lauren Mitchell
- Michael Diamond

Likely missed some other chances.
In reality, 5 golds would be a good result from here.
 
in putting a bit of perspective we're going to get pretty close to the target of 35 medals - we may actually get there.

but clearly we have been putting to many in the silver column then we would've liked.

if we walked away with 4-5 golds from only about 20 medals....

maybe i'm just trying to put a positive spin on it but some games this happens, other times you come away and half your medals are gold. the difference between gold silver and bronze is usually about 0.5%....
 
Whats the go with Spain? They've had a great few years in sport yet they still don't have a gold yet?
 
hopefully we get another gold tonight in the men's omnium and tomorrow in the mens laser in sailing.
i think the aussie sailor needs to finish 7th or better in the last race to be guaranteed gold
 
as a bit more perspective from previous posts showing russia and japan struggling, there's also spain who have had a downright disastrous games iwth only 3 medals so far and no golds. brazil with only 1 gold and 6 medals four years out from their home games would be pretty disappointed with that so far.
 

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ultimately it's really no coincidence. i would imagine spain has cut back big time on sports spending given their economic states. fortunately for them they're soccer players and rafa nadal are now basically self funded (or club funded - barca and real)... the brits have stepped it up big time in the last 10 years and even more so since getting the big announcement in 2005. it started with them targeting the rugby world cup in 2003, went to cricket after that and has now just exploded for them.

china is well documented how much money they have poured into sporting programs, and how they have done it systematically and targeted sports with lots of events - swimming, weightlifting and diving in particular. sports were you can take a team of 10-12 (more in the swimming i know) and you can realistically walk away with 4-5 golds and 10 medals. unlike say sports like hockey, basketball, waterpolo where an entire team of 10+ can only at best score 1 medal.
 
and as well just going on what i said earlier the nature of top line sports is there is nothing between the top handful of competitors in most events. 1-12-7 could easy be 10-5-5.... and i think even though we're lower down on the ladder than say kazakhstan or north korea, i think if we were 5-0-0 or 4-1-0 that would be doing nothing more than masking serious problems in our sporting psyche cause those tallies could easy 1-2-2 which would be an absolute disaster given our last few games... not saying that those countries would be disappointed, but i don't think a handful of gold medals and not much else points to the potential for extended success.

in saying that, i think there will definitely be some questions asked as to what it was that just stopped us from getting over the line over and over. not mentally strong enough? don't have the killer instinct?
 
Is there a thread anywhere about why we are so poo? Would be interested to read some theories
 
Really good posts Blackk thunder. You make a lot of sense and this British charge has been in the making for a number of years now. If we were completely serious about making a considerable rise in the medal tally we need to pump funding into sports with multiple medal events. Sports such as wrestling, weightlifting, judo, archery, weight lifting, etc, have so many medals up for grabs it is ridiculous.
But will we ever focus on these sports? Probably not and we will struggle to get back into the top 5 for a long while. Can you really see USA and China dropping off in the swimming? and there is always france, holland and japan popping up in events.

But things are a lot better on the team sports side of things. Womens water polo play China in the 1/4 final today, booomers I'm the 1/4 finals, same as opals (but will play usa in semi if they make it), kookaburras a strong chance, we should win a couple of gold in the sailing and diamond has started off his campaign witj a perfect score today. Glenn O'Shea is sitting in 1st position in the men's omnium with 2 events left and we still have Pearson to come.

1 gold is very disappointing, but with amount of silvers we have collected it shows we ade not far off in a number of events. Jabe to take some positives away, cos Team GB is dominating at the moment amd being an aussie in london at the moment is toigh! Took some heart out of the boomers smashing them last night.
 
I don't see what the big deal is, a gold medal is 92.5% silver anyway.
 
pepsi said:
Really good posts Blackk thunder. You make a lot of sense and this British charge has been in the making for a number of years now. If we were completely serious about making a considerable rise in the medal tally we need to pump funding into sports with multiple medal events. Sports such as wrestling, weightlifting, judo, archery, weight lifting, etc, have so many medals up for grabs it is ridiculous.
But will we ever focus on these sports? Probably not and we will struggle to get back into the top 5 for a long while. Can you really see USA and China dropping off in the swimming? and there is always france, holland and japan popping up in events.

But things are a lot better on the team sports side of things. Womens water polo play China in the 1/4 final today, booomers I'm the 1/4 finals, same as opals (but will play usa in semi if they make it), kookaburras a strong chance, we should win a couple of gold in the sailing and diamond has started off his campaign witj a perfect score today. Glenn O'Shea is sitting in 1st position in the men's omnium with 2 events left and we still have Pearson to come.

1 gold is very disappointing, but with amount of silvers we have collected it shows we ade not far off in a number of events. Jabe to take some positives away, cos Team GB is dominating at the moment amd being an aussie in london at the moment is toigh! Took some heart out of the boomers smashing them last night.
Click to expand...

It depends what's important. A lot of people prefer playing team sports for obvious reasons.

The Aussies could try pumping money into archery or judo or wrestling in mass numbers, but is it really likely that would work? They aren't at all traditional sports in this country, I mean swimming has a load of medals in it, plus it feels a fairly good fit for Aus but we hardly set the world alight even with decent funding.

The US and China will pump money into as many sports as they like on the levels that Aussies can't.
 
Many of our silver medallists would be good chances in 2016 anyway.

People are longing for the days of dominance in the pool, but this is no longer the case. If we are really that angsty about medals, throw money at disciplines like shooting, weightlifting and diving if we want to buff up our medal count. Hockey is only two, after all.
 
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