U.S. and China Tied for Gold at the Olympics?

I spent more time than I care to admit, watching stupid stuff. I'm not proud of it but the least I hoped for was some dominance by the US. Especially with the Rooskies sidelined. And what do I get? A tie with f-cking China and our women's basketball team almost loses to France.

I'm boycotting the next Olympics if I don't see the movement here.

U.S. and China Tied for Gold at the Olympics. Some in China Disagree.

National pride spreads after Chinese delegation tops gold column for first time since 2008, but it isn’t enough for everyone

By Sha Hua, WSJ

Aug. 12, 2024 6:48 am ET

China’s 40 gold medals at the Olympic Games in Paris tied it with the U.S. for first place in the most prestigious of medal columns, triggering pride but also defiance—and a suggestion among some that China actually won.

Chinese state media celebrated Team China’s achievement with the hashtag “China tied for number one in gold” on the popular social-media website Weibo, which racked up more than 720 million views and nearly one million likes.

The U.S. and China have claimed the top two gold-medal counts in every Summer Olympics since 2004 with the exception of the Rio Games in 2016, when the U.K. edged out China for the runner-up spot. China won as the host country in 2008, with the U.S. winning the other times.

This year was the first where the two sporting juggernauts tied for gold, a hard-fought competition that featured heated rhetoric around doping allegations and unfolded at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing.

While many Chinese Weibo users appeared pleased with the result, a vocal minority disputed it.

“No no no, we have 44 gold medals. We have Chinese Taipei and Hong Kong,” wrote one user. The comment received more than 98,000 likes.

Hong Kong, a separately administered Chinese territory, won two gold medals in Paris. For the gold ceremony, the flag of the Hong Kong special administrative region is raised and the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China is played.

China’s Communist Party considers Taiwan, which won two golds in Paris, to be part of its territory. The democratically self-ruled island is only allowed to compete at the Olympics under the name “Chinese Taipei,” a requirement many Taiwanese regard as unjust and an indignity.

Images showing China winning 44 medals received a mix of praise and pushback on the Chinese internet, with some users calling the adjusted count petty. Critics noted that all three delegations had different Olympic committees and were listed separately on the IOC’s official medal count—a practice Chinese state media have also followed.

Determining which country “won” the Olympics is a matter of debate. The IOC gives priority to gold medals, turning the number of silvers and bronzes only in the case of a tie. The U.S. traditionally tallies the overall number of medals won, in which its lead is much more dominant.

Some sports analysts and fans have argued that a better measure of a country’s athletic prowess is to look at the medal yield on a per capita basis. Australia, which earned 18 golds despite a population less than a 10th the size of the U.S.’s, would finish near the top in Paris by that measure, though the winner would be Dominica—a country of 66,000 residents—by dint of its single gold in triple jump.

China’s cabinet used the term “clean” for the first time in its customary congratulatory note to the country’s top-finishing athletes, in an apparent reaction to doping allegations that hovered over the Chinese delegation.

“You insisted on winning moral, stylish and clean gold medals,” it said.

In the run-up to Paris, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and American lawmakers raised questions about the effectiveness of the World Anti-Doping Agency in enforcing clean competition after the international body cleared 23 Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for a banned substance ahead of the 2021 Tokyo Games.

China’s antidoping agency said all the swimmers inadvertently ingested small amounts of the heart drug trimetazidine by eating tainted food while staying at the same hotel. WADA officials said that theory was consistent with the swimmers’ test results.

In response to that, WADA and CHINADA accused the U.S. of politicizing the issue and pointed to instances when U.S. athletes had been cleared to compete after eating contaminated food. This in turn spurred Chinese internet users to cast aspersions on American athletes.

“Each of our gold medals is clean. So we still won,” read one Weibo comment that echoed China’s official language, earning tens of thousands of likes.

Much of China’s Olympic internet chatter was dominated by hashtags about star athletes in Chinese mainstays, such as table tennis, diving and badminton. But Chinese state media and social-media users also fawned over victories in sports traditionally considered the domain of developed countries, such as swimming, tennis or BMX Freestyle.

Chinese swimmer Pan Zhanle’s victory in the men’s 100-meter freestyle event and the team gold in the men’s 4 x 100 meters medley—an event the U.S. has won since it was introduced 40 years ago—were feted inside the country as breakthroughs for Asians in a sport traditionally dominated by Western athletes.

One of the most widely circulated images on Weibo showed Zheng Qinwen, who won China’s first gold in women’s tennis, as a little girl watching on a small television in a classroom in 2014 as Li Na became the first Chinese tennis player to win a grand slam title.

Chinese internet users also celebrated the medal ceremony for table tennis mixed doubles, when a member of the winning Chinese duo initiated a podium selfie with competitors from North Korea and South Korea—an expression of the unifying power of sports amid a swirl of national rivalries.