Olympic Alphabet : Z is for ... (Part 2)

Z – LAST, BUT NOT LEAST (Part 2)

Now that we’ve got all the background information out of the way let’s turn to the Olympians themselves.

There’s not enough space to detail the performance of individual athletes because there were so many. However, it isn’t possible NOT to mention Team Lgbt’s first Olympic champion of Rio 2016 as it was the same person who provided Brazil with their first gold medal of the games. Rafaela Silva won her judo gold on August 10^th and opened up to the media on her same-sex relationship.

In the following analysis of the medals I’ve included all of the 57 known out lgbt Olympians, plus 2 who did not wish to be identified.

Of those 59 athletes 26 won medals. There were no multi-medal-winners this time round. Here they are listed by sport:

EVENT		NATION	TEAM/ATHLETE
Women’s athletics 800m	G	South Africa	Caster Semenya
Women’s javelin	S	South Africa	Sunette Viljoen
Women’s basketball	G	USA	Seimone Augustus
			Elena Delle Donne
			Brittney Griner
			Angel McCoughtrey
Women’s flyweight boxing	G	GB	Nicola Adams
Men’s 10m synchro diving	B	GB	Tom Daley
Equestrian team dressage	S	GB	Carl Hester
			Spencer Wilton
Women’s football	S	Sweden	Lisa Dahlkvist
			Nilla Fischer
			Hedwig Lindahl
			Caroline Seger
	B	Canada	Stephanie Labbé
			Marie-Eva Nault
			(one player not out publicly)
Women’s handball	S	France	Alexandre Lacrabère
Women’s hockey	G	GB	Helen Richardson-Walsh
			Kate Richardson-Walsh
			Susannah Townsend
	S	Netherlands	Carlien Dirkse van der Heuvel
			Maartje Paumen
Women’s -57kg judo	G	Brazil	Rafaela Silva
Women rugby 7s	B	Canada	Jen Kish
Women’s 10km swim	S	Italy	Rachel Bruni

But how did Team Lgbt do overall? Where would they have finished in the medal table if they were a “nation”? What I’ve done to provide a more accurate result is take all the individual lgbt medals out of the national table. For team medals where both straight and lgbt athletes competed I’ve simply duplicated the medal – one counted for the national team, and one for Team Lgbt.

From the table above we can see that Team Lgbt won 5 gold medals, 6 silvers and 3 bronzes. That would place them in 17^th position behind Jamaica, higher than New Zealand and Canada. There was no real significant changes to the official medal table as a result. Italy and Australia swapped 9^th and 10^th positions, and Brazil moved down from 13 to 15. Both of these movements were caused by the removal of individual medals being transferred to Team Lgbt. The biggest move was South Africa. Because of the transfer of Caster Semenya’s gold medal they moved down from 30 to 40. The other nations retained their positions.

When I was adding the Rio medals to my own database it struck me how much it was like those Top Ten Singles chart shows. My tables include all the top 8 placings for which the International Olympic Committee award medals and diplomas for each event, and that meant there was more movement within the table. If I only included the medals there would be 121 Olympians, but with the top 8 places there are another 51 who could be included.

Remember, every time a medal is won everyone else on the list below it moves down one place. That means past Olympians will always go down, not up the chart. Even medal winners from Rio can move down if more athletes win higher positions (as is the case with Tom Daley). So, if you’ve got some suitable pop-picking music to play in the background, here’s what’s happening in the new chart!

“Hello pop-pickers and here’s the new chart for Rio 2016. There’s 18 athletes moving up the chart and 14 moving down, with 16 new entries. Highest climber is Sweden’s Lisa Dahlkvist whose silver medal in football takes her from equal 153rd straight up to number 86. Moving up into the Top Ten is Dutch hockey player Maartje Paumen whose silver medal puts her in equal 9th spot with 2 gold and 1 silver. Moving down one place below Maartje is her coach Alyson Annan. Just outside the Top Ten Nicola Adams punches her way up to equal 12th. Brazil’s judoka Rafaela Silva and GB’s hockey player Susanna Townsend go straight in as highest new entries at number 44 with one gold medal each. They are joined by US women’s basketball players Elena Delle Donne and Britney Griner, while their team-mates Seimone Augustus and Angel McCoughtrey double up on their previous gold and move up to equal 12th with Nicola Adams. Moving down are Dutch dressage riders and partners Edward Gal and Hans Peter Minderhoud, both pushed down by the team silver won by GB’s Carl Hester who now moves up 2 places to 28. Tom Daley makes the biggest drop. His bronze medal wasn’t enough to stop him from splashing down 30 places to number 107. With no-one outside the Top Ten retaining their spot in the chart it looks like Aussie swimmer Ian Thorpe, who came out in 2013 and went straight in at Number 1 with his 9 medals, won’t be toppled for a very long time yet.”

Of course, the full movement of positions is very complex but it doesn’t look as though anyone will come near the top five for a very long time. Just out of interest, here is the new all-time Top Ten medal chart with the new entry in joint 9th place –

NAME	NATION	SPORT	G	S	B
Ian Thorpe	Australia	swimming	5	3	1
Ireen Wüst	Netherlands	speed skating	4	3	1
Greg Louganis	USA	diving	4	1
Jayna Hefford	Canada	ice hockey	4	1
Marnie McBean	Canada	rowing	3	1
Charline Labonté	Canada	ice hockey	3
Sheryl Swoopes	USA	basketball	3
Karin Büttner-Janz	East Germany	gymnastics	2	3	1
Mildred Didrikson Zaharias	USA	athletics	2	1
Maartje Paumen	Netherlands	field hockey	2	1