Olympics (in)equality...

It's not September yet, and this basically means that we are still able to discuss about sports without being totally focussed on the game that drags most money (yup, that's association football, you can have a look at it here, and add up the four foremost leagues).
Quick recap: we are going to use the same boring index of inequality we have already used in the past (see e.g. here).

Now, for a change, this will be applied to the total number of medals collected by each country at the Summer olympics across the editions. We will start from 1960 (this is for soul-related reasons...), and consider all the participating countries.

And guys, we have something good coming from Rio 2016: it's been more than 50 years since the Gini coefficient was this low. This means that the distribution of medals among participating countries, despite the increasing presence of golden eater empires, has been more, let's say, equal.
If we combine these figures with the fact that the number of countries who participated reached its maximum with Rio 2016 (207), and that the share of the "De Coubertin-ian" countries (i.e. those that do not capture any medal at the Olympics) is at its lowest level since 1980 (less than 58%, in Moscow it was 55%, when, however, the number of participating countries was heavily impacted by boycott), we could speculate that if you participate to the games, it won't be a mirage to get rewarded soon.

Flag bearers...

Lopez Lomong will carry the US flag at Beijing Olympics. Not too bad for a Sudanese guy who used to walk more than five miles a day out of his refugee camp in Kenya just to see the Sydney Olympics on a B/W screen. Good call from the USOC guys, and a (not so) little reminder to China about the Sudan conflict...








And Homa Hosseini will be the flag carrier for Iran, whose politics is usually blamed for its chauvinism. This is another good one!

Beijing wonders

These stadia are really terrific, chapeau!
Is it gross to say that the second looks like an ashtray more than a bird's nest? ;)
Seriously, I have a crush on both of them...

are the cheetahs full? may be or may be not yet...

Oscar Pistorius didn't make it for the Olympics. He just fell short of the standard qualifying time of 45.55. He literally tried and did his best (46.26), but it wasn't enough for his cheetahs to climb a spot for Beijing.
That's ok, mr blade runner, I will be waiting for you in London 2012!