I don't think medal counts are important. In fact, I was rooting for China, Iraq, GBP, Romania, and India this time around.
Sporting is facing diminishing returns. Except for a few extreme sports, I don't believe any country has an implicit racial advantage. I believe that top athletes have roughly the same bell curve distribution in each society, the difference is, some societies are more adept at finding these individuals based on either money or on cultural tradition (e.g. lots of participation in those sports) India and China both have huge populations, but India doesn't get many medals. Why? Is it because Indians are inferior? No, it's because of Indian government support for athletics, and different cultural emphasis on different sports. If 30 variations of Cricket were an olympic sport instead of Swimming, India would do much better medal wise.
The gist of this is, let's say people with top athletic potential are born as 0.1% of the population. Austraila will produce roughly 25,000 of these people, the US 250,000, and China 1 million. However, those Chinese will be distributed in both poor areas and in rich areas, so many of them will never get a chance to be trained. However, China has so many, they will still be able to find atleast 500 to field qualifying athletes in every sport. Ditto for US. Australia has fewer people, but Australia has a much more sports and leisure oriented culture, so it is far more likely that an Australian with potential will be "found" and trained, whereas probably 200,000 of those top US athletes will wind up as couch potatoes.
In the end, China, US, and Australia will be able to field top athletes in most events, and hence, have a shot at high medal count totals. Any country with enough population and surplus money and leisure, should be able to sample the top of their bell curve and field world class athletes. You only need to find out 500 people.
Given this, I don't see any reason why the "superpowers" of olympic medal counts (Western countries, Russia, and China+Korea+Japan) won't eventually equalize. Money spent on sports training and finding top candidates will eventually yield diminishing returns, and in sports like the 100m dash, you'll see mostly random luck determining the winner eventually (who'se having a bad day, who had a misstep, etc)
Eventually, believe it or not, India will have a larger medal count, and the US, China, and Australia will see their dominance reduced. Globalization will spread some region specific sports to everyone (e.g. US is losing dominance in basketball, England lost dominance in cricket)
In the end, I believe the olympics, like football, or gridiron, or baseball, will come down to whose's having a good year and got good recruits that particular yield and you'll see medal counts oscillate between countries.
Unless of course, we legalize genetic engineering and drugs, in which case, performance could probably be extended much further and the effect of diminishing returns could be lessened. Then you'd have scenarios were a country could win by being more risky and gutsy with the lives of it's athletes.
The simple fact of the matter is, I have no interest in whether the US wins "medal count" because I believe people in most countries are equally endowed and eventually it will reach parity (nor do I want the US to maintain dominance, it's in my interest to see them do better) Personally, I root for the underdog.
I also do not care nor criticize European culture, fashion, or food. It's off my radar, I welcome diversity, I hate prudishness. The only thing I criticize Europe for is their style of governing and economics, which is fine by me, as long as people stop trying to force that model on the US. L233 on the hand, likes pissing contests and has been active in dozens of threads with a subtext of European cultural superiority.
My only point is, many countries choose to display stereotypical costumes representing aspects of their culture in the olympics. If the US is the land of Disney, McDonalds, Jazz, Hip-Hop, and Cowboys. Why can't we wear those costumes in our parades as well? Are we not permitted to celebrate our cultural aspects just it offends German sensibility which seems to think everyone should parade in preppie clothes?
