Mga app ng Google
Pangunahing menu

Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"India > Finland in Olympic medals"

36 Comments -

1 – 36 of 36
Blogger Paavo said...

Track and Field used to be the measuring stick for manliness in Finland. Nowadays it's just for geeks. Throwing the javelin the furthest used to make you the hottest guy around in the town, but today it's like winning the local chess tournament. No one cares.

Being a musician or a reality tv star is much more rewarding for young westerners. If olympic sports had the pool of wannabes to choose from that music industry or reality tv has I bet that Finland could do a lot better in Olympics.

8/15/12, 4:40 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Finnish school kids do well, though. In fact, they beat all the other Europeans on the international standardized tests and finished neck and neck with the East Asians.

8/15/12, 4:57 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

.This national obsession with fitness helped Finland avoid complete conquest by the Soviets in the 1939-40 Winter War,
this is what sport SHOULD be, not hyper consumerism/jock sniffing/bread and circuses/timewaster as is the case with American football.

8/15/12, 5:06 PM

Anonymous hbd chick said...

the finns don't win so many medals in the olympics nowadays 'cause the ioc has yet to add wife carrying to the events. just you wait! (^_^)

8/15/12, 5:11 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Finns lost a particular gold medal match in Ice Hockey in 1980

---Scales Fall

8/15/12, 5:43 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'll say this much for the Finns. Even their super-duper-jocks are nerds.

8/15/12, 5:54 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Finns are beta.

8/15/12, 5:59 PM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

That's what Stalin thought in 1939.

8/15/12, 6:06 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Have the Finns decided to put all their efforts into the winter games?

8/15/12, 6:17 PM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

Finns are beta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4

8/15/12, 6:34 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's what Stalin thought in 1939.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_H%C3%A4yh%C3%A4


Beta male rage. Being beta doesn't mean being bad at war and killing.

8/15/12, 7:23 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nokia isn't doing so well since Apple came along and drank their milkshake.

8/15/12, 7:24 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nokia isn't doing so well since Apple came along and drank their milkshake.

Yeah Nokias used to dominate for a few years. They were everywhere and then gradually disappeared.

8/15/12, 7:28 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nokia isn't doing so well since Apple came along and drank their milkshake.

Nokia's stock price was around $40 in 2007. It's around $2.65 now.

I wonder if this would be a good buying opportunity for the stock. Finns are very smart and reliable people. On the other hand, this kind of thing is really unpredictable despite the fairly solid nature of HBD facts.

8/15/12, 7:33 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I wonder if this would be a good buying opportunity for the stock. Finns are very smart and reliable people. On the other hand, this kind of thing is really unpredictable despite the fairly solid nature of HBD facts."

Almost every single Western consumer electronics company has been driven out of business by the East Asians. MSFT and Apple are both big into contract manufacturing.

8/15/12, 7:37 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Almost every single Western consumer electronics company has been driven out of business by the East Asians. MSFT and Apple are both big into contract manufacturing.

Nokia's phones didn't decline due to Asian phones though. Japanese phones don't sell in the US. There is Samsung but they didn't really out sell Nokia. It was Apple and Blackberry.

8/15/12, 8:06 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Almost every single Western consumer electronics company has been driven out of business by the East Asians. MSFT and Apple are both big into contract manufacturing."

And Google.

Thanks to east asian efficiency and competitiveness we can buy excellent smartphones for $0 with contract; excellent tablets for less than $200; 32" LCD TVs for $250 etc.

This is good for the world.

8/15/12, 9:02 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Finns are betta.

8/15/12, 9:54 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm not sure if Apple is the main Nokia killer. Chinese Hwawei probably took the most business.

8/15/12, 10:30 PM

Anonymous Volksverhetzer said...

Scandinavian dominance in mobile technology grew out of the NordicMobileTech-system in the 1980ies.

Norway lost it's mobile phone firm almost at once, due to the new intra Scandinavian competition, and the Danes had theirs bought up by Americans.

The Swedes and the Finns kept theirs, and Erikson and Nokia was central in developing the GSM-system. The long term consequence was that Erikson and Nokia became huge, as there wasn't really any competition.

When the rest of the world caught on,Erikson and Nokia was doomed to fail, just like Norway and Denmark was unable to compete with the Swedes and the Finns during the NMT era.

In the long run, Norway and Denmark got lucky, and loosing Nokia might for the same reason show itself to be an advantage, as the Nokia-engineers is freed up to pursue something more profitable.

8/15/12, 11:43 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You've got to remember that Finland is only a small country of 5 million or so inhabitants. once the 'big boy' nations such as the USA started putting a lot of national organizational effort, money and coaching into sports, by the law of big numbers itself, Finland was screwed.
The case of Britain is intersting. Basically a 'national lottery' - ie a state run gambling monopoly that actually pays out a tiny proportion of stake money as prizes - was instituted in 1994. Revenues from it have been huge. Stake money is creamed off in huge drabs and aspring atheletes in Britain (which since humiliating Olympics in the '90s has used careful planning and strategy to win medals)are paid a actual wage from lottery funds - a wage considerably above median earnings. This coupled with intensive coaching and sporting facilities.

8/16/12, 12:58 AM

Anonymous TH said...

This national obsession with fitness helped Finland avoid complete conquest by the Soviets in the 1939-40 Winter War, which was largely an aerobically-exhausting fight of infantry in thick snow. When people talk about how awful nationalism is in the Olympics, I'd respond by pointing to Finnish nationalism.

Finland was extremely nationalistic in general in the interwar period. It's instructive to compare Finland to the Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) that surrendered to the Soviets without a fight because they were so internally divided. Finland, too, was politically divided as a result of the Civil War of 1918 -- for example, in sports there was a strict ideological division between "working class" and "bourgeois" teams -- but by the Winter War (1939-40) the nationalist ideology had permeated society to the extent that there were almost no defections even though a substantial proportion of the population were nominally communists.

Incidentally, ten Finnish Olympic medalists were killed on the front in WW2.

They had no male javelin finalist this year, while Kenya, of all places, had one.

Actually, all three male javelin throwers from Finland reached the final, and one of them won bronze.

The common theme of those events is that it is easy - conceptually - to dope for them, and Finland is probably not willing to compete in that regard.

It's not that Finnish athletes are more averse to doping, it's just that Finnish anti-doping control is probably one of the most thorough in the world. This is especially since a huge scandal about ten years ago in Nordic World Ski Championships, held in Finland, where most of the Finnish cross-country team was caught doping. (They were using a blood volume expander that they mistakenly thought was permissible, apparently to cover up EPO use.)

Finland has the sports mix of a poor country, with a 5 million population, and rich people. That is not a good combination if one wants to amass a lot of medals.

Two of the three medals Finland got in London were from sailing events.

Finns have in general got much less athletic over the years. A good metric is the Cooper test that each male cohort takes when conscripted (yes, there's still conscription in Finland). In 1987, the average conscript ran 2713 meters in 12 minutes, now the average is 2481 meters. I don't have figures from the 1970s, the last great period of Finnish distance running, but they were probably better than in 1987.

Another thing is that team sports, particularly ice hockey but also internationally obscure sports like floorball, have become much more popular than track & field and other individual sports.

8/16/12, 1:32 AM

Blogger Steve Sailer said...

"Incidentally, ten Finnish Olympic medalists were killed on the front in WW2"

Wow. Only two American major league baseball players were killed in WWII and they had only four games between them. One better known big leaguer was killed in WWI, and the Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson eventually died from being gassed in a training accident just after the end of WWI.

8/16/12, 1:43 AM

Anonymous TH said...

The best known Finnish athlete killed in WW2 was probably Gunnar Höckert who won 5000m in Berlin Olympics (1936).

8/16/12, 2:15 AM

Blogger Matias F. said...

Formula One and World Rally Championship are two rich man's sports where Finns are over-represented, but they are not featured in the Olympics. The best drivers are household names. Mika Häkkinen is probably the best known Finnish "athlete" of the last 20 years. But, as you say, driving is not done on tax or charitable money. Sailing or shooting would probably be the best bets if the Finnish state decided to spend a lot of money on gaining Olympic medals.

8/16/12, 3:33 AM

Blogger Graham Asher said...

Anonymous said that the UK National lottery "pays out a tiny proportion of stake money as prizes". Only true if you think 50% is a tiny proportion.

In fact (source: Wikipedia): "Of every pound (£) spent on National Lottery games, 50 pence (p) goes to the prize fund, 28p to 'good causes' as set out by Parliament (though some of this is considered by some to be a stealth tax[3] levied to support the Big Lottery Fund, a fund constituted to support public spending[4]), 12p to the UK Government as duty and 5p to retailers as commission, while Camelot receives 4.5p to cover operating costs and 0.5p profit."

8/16/12, 4:27 AM

Anonymous FWG said...

As an American with Finnish lineage, thank you for this article.

I have the Nokia Lumia 900. My first smart phone, and it works for me.

8/16/12, 6:21 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"In 1987, the average conscript ran 2713 meters in 12 minutes, now the average is 2481 meters."

Didn't the "young men today have less testosterone than their fathers" meme had one study from the finnish army?

8/16/12, 8:32 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fins didn't just settle in Michigan's U.P., there is a notable population in northern Minnesota (Duluth and the iron range). Equally bleak with poor prospects for agriculture.

8/16/12, 9:31 AM

Anonymous Finns said...

The Finns have a hardluck history few know about.

Like Korea, Poland, etc - they have been historically victims of poor geography between much larger powers.

While everyone know of the Great Irish Potato famine that killed about 10% of the population 1845-1849, hardly anyone knows of the last great European famine 2 decades later 1866-68 in Finland that killed 15% of the population.

Finland also had one of Europe's greatest single famine in 1796-1797 losing upto 1/3 of the population.

8/16/12, 12:03 PM

Blogger pat said...

When people talk about how awful nationalism is in the Olympics ...

That people would be me, I suppose. My argument is simple and, I believe, irrefutable. The Olympics are promoted as a means to promote peace, fellow feeling, and international understanding. But it does just the opposite.

The Olympics are corrupt. The judges cheat and the participants cheat.

National sports are largely pure and scandal free. The Black Sox scandal is almost a century old now. Umpires just don't get locked up for fixing games. Basketball refrees are not very often involved in point shaving scandals.

But no one trusts Olympic officials. We expect bad officiating. If in organized US baseball the black umpires organized to favor black players it would be comparable. But no one thinks that blacks get a bigger strike zone at the plate or the benefit of the doubt in close plays at first. Democrats hate Republicans certainly but no one thinks that matters in the ball park.

All of these racial and political preferences and bias effect officiating in the Olympics. The contrast is stark.

Albertosaurus

8/16/12, 12:57 PM

Anonymous irishman said...

"Finns said...
The Finns have a hardluck history few know about.

Like Korea, Poland, etc - they have been historically victims of poor geography between much larger powers.

While everyone know of the Great Irish Potato famine that killed about 10% of the population 1845-1849, hardly anyone knows of the last great European famine 2 decades later 1866-68 in Finland that killed 15% of the population.

Finland also had one of Europe's greatest single famine in 1796-1797 losing upto 1/3 of the population.

8/16/12 12:03 PM"

I majored in history in an Irish university. The death toll in the famine vary but I was told by my conservative(read anglophilic) professor that the death toll was at least one in eight.

The reason Irish history and culture has had such an outsized impact is that we:

A. Stayed in the cities when we got to America. We never liked farming. We only did it because the Engish used penal laws from doing anything else.

B. Were very political, English speaking and tribal. All of which we have to thank the English for.

Finns on the other hand went to the northern peninsula of Michigan of all places. Up there, no-one will here you scream.

8/16/12, 1:23 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Steve,

This may be off topic, but the news that India government decided to back out of PISA 2012 test. This is a very interesting news since i think this is the first time a country withdraw from it.

Link: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-08-03/mumbai/33019239_1_india-backs-global-stage-math-and-science

8/16/12, 8:04 PM

Anonymous Uncle Peregrine said...

I always wonder if ECHELON made telecommunications companies from neutral countries more attractive to non-anglophone countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

8/16/12, 8:58 PM

Anonymous Uncle Peregrine said...

If the Soviet Union were still a country it would be the winner by far:

Russia 24 26 32 82
Ukraine 6 5 9 20
Kazakhstan 7 1 5 13
Belarus 2 5 5 12
Azerbaijan 2 2 6 10
Georgia 1 3 3 7
Lithuania 2 1 2 5
Uzbekistan 1 0 3 4
Armenia 0 1 2 3
Latvia 1 0 1 2
Estonia 0 1 1 2
Moldova 0 0 2 2
Tajikistan 0 0 1 1
46 45 72 163

Post Soviet citizens are poor enough to be motivated to get the Olympic glory, the economy has recovered enough to fund some institutions and the traditions are there. Only Turkmenistan and Kyrgizstan didn't get in on the act.

8/16/12, 9:20 PM

Blogger Dutch Boy said...

Or perhaps too ethical to go the doping route?

8/20/12, 1:41 PM

Comments are moderated, at whim.
You can use some HTML tags, such as <b>, <i>, <a>

Comment moderation has been enabled. All comments must be approved by the blog author.

You will be asked to sign in after submitting your comment.
OpenID LiveJournal WordPress TypePad AOL