Winter Olympics:

It's a difficult task to determine when the winter Olympics really began. The winter Olympics used to be a tiny event, held the same year as the summer Olympics, with a few sports, a few competitors, and a few nations competing. There was very little money involved, either for the athletes or the television broadcasts. Instead of the best athletes competing as professionals for the sake of excellence, the winter games had some strange concept about the purity of sport and amateurism. The true purity of sport isn't sport devoid of money, but the greatest athletes competing on the world stage in the pursuit of excellence. If an athlete wins, but didn't beat the other best athletes in the world while winning, it's not a real win. The Olympics has to bring together the best in the world at each event or there's no real point holding it.

The winter games therefore just weren't that exciting in the past. They didn't consist of the best elites, the professionals. They only had a few sports. Only a few nations even bothered to compete. They were held as a sort of warm up to the summer games. And TV didn't pay much attention to it either. Though the line is arbitrary, I'd say the first 'modern' winter Olympics was in 1992 at Albertville, France. This is when a lot of things changed in the world. The USSR split up, Germany unified, Eastern Europe was freed and redrew all their maps accordingly. The winter Olympics had their own schedule of games free of the summer Olympic shadow. The TV's began to broadcast the events to wide audiences, the athletes jumped to 1801 over Calgary's 1423, the events jumped to 57 over Calgary's 46, the nations competing jumped to 64 over Calgary's 57, and the number of sports went from Calgary's 6 to the modern level of 7 which still holds today.

The winter Olympics have continued to grow ever since then, but if there's any giant shift in winter Olympic history, it was probably in 1992. Since then, the Olympics have continued to grow in scale to 86 medal events, 2629 athletes, and 83 countries participating. God bless the Olympics, I say. Beijing's Olympics were marvelous, and the same is true of Vancouver. The new sports are fun and exciting, while the old sports are exquisite in their level of performance, far above the expectations of the past. Everything is faster, higher, stronger.

The Winter Olympics are also a great way of finding out something hidden about the world. Which countries are progressing, and which are regressing? Which countries perform above their GDP and population would imply, and which perform below? What regions of Europe, which should have a pretty even distribution of ice and snow to train upon, out perform other regions, and why? Obviously the winter Olympics is not a good proxy for a country's merit or virtue in the world, but it is correlated. You cannot produce top medal standings without hard working athletes, productive economies, supportive governments, and mental/physical genetic gifts that prove your race or ethnicity has something worthy of praise.

So let's look at a timeline of the 'modern' winter Olympics in terms of medal count and standings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Winter_Olympics_medal_table

1992

1. Germany: 26
2. (USSR): 23
3. Austria: 21
4. Norway: 20
5. Italy: 14
6. USA: 11
7. France: 9
8. Finland: 7
9. Canada: 7
10. Japan: 7
11. South Korea: 4
12. Netherlands: 4
13. Sweden: 4
14. Switzerland: 3
15. China: 3
16. Czechoslovakia: 3
17. Luxembourg: 2
18. New Zealand: 1
19. North Korea: 1
20. Spain: 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Winter_Olympics_medal_table

1994:

1. Norway: 26
2. Germany: 24
3. Russia: 23
4. Italy: 20
5. USA: 13
6. Canada: 13
7. Switzerland: 8
8. Austria: 8
9. South Korea: 6
10. Finland: 6
11. Japan: 5
12. France: 5
13. Netherlands: 4
14. Sweden: 3
15. Kazakhstan: 3
16. China: 3
17. Slovenia: 3
18. Ukraine: 2
19. Belarus: 2
20. Great Britain: 2
21. Uzbekistan: 1
22. Australia: 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Winter_Olympics_medal_table

1998:

1. Germany: 29
2. Norway: 25
3. Russia: 18
4. Austria: 17
5. Canada: 15
6. USA: 13
7. Finland: 12
8. Netherlands: 11
9. Japan: 10
10. Italy: 10
11. France: 8
12. China: 8
13. Switzerland: 7
14. South Korea: 6
15. Czech Republic: 3
17. Sweden: 3
18. Belarus: 2
19. Kazakhstan: 2
20. Bulgaria: 1
21. Denmark: 1
22. Ukraine: 1
23. Australia: 1
24. Belgium: 1
25. Great Britain: 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Winter_Olympics_medal_table

2002:

1. Germany: 36
2. USA: 34
3. Norway: 25
4. Canada: 17
5. Austria: 17
6. Russia: 13
7. Italy: 13
8. France: 11
9. Switzerland: 11
10. Netherlands: 8
11. China: 8
12. Finland: 7
13. Sweden: 7
14. Croatia: 4
15. South Korea: 4
16. Czech Republic: 3
17. Estonia: 3
18. Bulgaria: 3
19. Australia: 2
20. Great Britain: 2
21. Japan: 2
22. Poland: 2
23. Belarus: 1
24. Slovenia: 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Winter_Olympics_medal_table

2006:

1. Germany: 29
2. USA: 25
3. Canada: 24
4. Austria: 23
5. Russia: 22
6. Norway: 19
7. Sweden: 14
8. Switzerland: 14
9. South Korea: 11
10. Italy: 11
11. China: 11
12. France: 9
13. Netherlands: 9
14. Finland: 9
15. Czech Republic: 4
16. Estonia: 3
17. Croatia: 3
18. Australia: 2
19. Poland: 2
20. Ukraine: 2
21. Japan: 1
22. Belarus: 1
23. Bulgaria: 1
24. Great Britain: 1
25. Slovakia: 1
26. Latvia: 1

http://www.nbcolympics.com/medals/2010-standings/index.html

2010:

1. USA: 37
2. Germany: 30
3. Canada: 26
4. Norway: 23
5. Austria: 16
6. Russia: 15
7. South Korea: 14
8. Sweden: 11
9. China: 11
10. France: 11
11. Switzerland: 9
12. Netherlands: 8
13. Czech Republic: 6
14. Poland: 6
15. Italy: 5
16. Japan: 5
17. Finland: 5
18. Australia: 3
19. Slovakia: 3
20. Belarus: 3
21. Slovenia: 3
22. Croatia: 3
23. Latvia: 2
24. Great Britain: 1
25. Kazakhstan: 1
26. Estonia: 1


From what we can see, Europe > North America > East Asia > Former USSR > Rest of the World. Yay for a non-materialist ranking of merit! Too bad snowfall and elevation have so much to do with where winter athletics is seriously pursued.