Prompted by the one year to go shenanigans yesterday and one of the British swimmers being interviewed at the swimming world champs stating that Phelps was obviously the best athlete in any sport the world has ever seen as evidenced by his medal haul I did a quick google to see how many medals were available to different sports next year. I was obviously quite aware but it was still interesting:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Olympics
Not surprisingly Athletics is right at the top with 47 encompassing track and field then swimming with 34 but then it gets a bit murky depending on what is grouped with what. On the face of it weightlifting comes next with 18 although if you lump all the cycling bits and bobs together and the gymnastics bits and bobs together they also have 18 a piece.
My thoughts:-
1. 15 medals for shooting seems a lot of medals for something that a lot of folk would struggle to think of as a sport (I am aware that the Olympics is called the Olympic Games but still...Darts and snooker are games and don't have a single medal let alone 15). Triathlon & Hockey are very popular participation sports worldwide now with the Olympic gold as their highest achievement but only get 2 a piece.
2. When you see how many medals are available for swimming (you could arguably lump diving's 8 and maybe synchronised swimming's 2 in there for a total of 44) and how similar some of the events are the fact that cycling had to lob out quite a few track events over the last couple of games to bring in new ones such as BMX and more female track events rather than just increase the number it seems a bit harsh especially considering how expensive a velodrome is to build and how little comparative use it gets within the games period.
3. If you lump events as diverse as hammer throwing and marathon running together and call them collectively "Athletics", you could arguably lump all of the "one on one combative" events together such as Boxing, Wrestling, Judo, Taekwondo and (slightly more speculatively) Fencing. Together they have 61 medals. 61 Medals! I'd never really thought of combative events as the dominant sport of the Olympics before.
4. The Phelps best in the world in any sport ever based on medals won argument seems pish to me (and I come from a swimming background so not anti swimming in my perspective). He was/is amazing but I'm struggling to think of another sporting arena where he could possibly have entered 7 events with one body type and had a chance of winning all of them. To me this rather indicates that there are too many swimming events if they are similar enough for the sport's greats to sweep up so many in a single games. 100m, 200m, long jump & 4X100 relay in Athletics or various shooting events was the best I cold think of realistically in other sports.
