What makes the Olympic medal significant?
106659
it's an icon of greatness.....it shows that you're at the pinnacle of your sport, only the best of the best are able to even try out to qualify for the olympics much less make it to the podium stand. On top of that, you're doing it for your country, so it stands for a lot of pride as well.
926543
http://www.centennialpark.com/about/features.html\n\n23 FLAG POLES\n\nIt's the focus of a vast paved plaza bordered by 23 flags honoring all the host countries of the modern Games. :-)
1014053
While the World Cup doesn't interest me, I truly enjoy the Olympics.\n\nI don't care to watch every event, prefer individual sports. I do make a effort to see the opening and closing ceremonies.\n\nAs a young child, I learned about different sports, and some basic geography.\n\nI do agree, there may be some politics, some of the evils of the world are showing their ugly faces, but that is only a very small part of the overall.\n\nI still like to see it as a chance for the world's youth to compete and show their skills. For a couple of weeks every other year, the best of the best get to meet, no matter what country they call home.\n\nHowever I am afraid things are changing. Even the Olympics are being affected by the less than desirable human traits. Cheating appears to be happening more often, and that handful of people who would like to use it to make a political statement.\n\nThe commercialization drives me crazy. You see the Olympic logo attached to everything, however that is the lesser of the evils. Those companies do have to pay a lot of money to use it, and any money that is gathered honestly, beats the alternative.
824590
I love the Olympics, it is something that for me shows the best of humanity. The world comes together, representing all nations and all walks of life, and in a friendly atmosphere competes as equals. \n\nWhen I heard it was coming to London, I was over the moon (until the very next day) and I still am. The Olympics is about more than money, we are privileged that it is coming to us and that the eyes of the world will be on our capital and our culture and everything that makes me proud to be British to celebrate something that, as mentioned above, I think is the best.\n\nI wont go as far as to say sod the cost, but I think the values it has are too easily overlooked when money comes into it. When you think of how much money is pissed away on welfare fakers who cant be assed to work as just one example, I think it is a small price to pay for greatness and for being a part of something that really matters
93239
As you already know, it has been included in the Olympics before but I think this is just a way to prevent the US from medalling since they're the most dominant in these sports, especially softball.
113796
Let's see: China country of a billion+ people\nGold 2 Silver 3 Bronze 4 total of 9\n\nGermany country of 82,431,390 people\nGold 9 Silver 10 Bronze 5 total of 25\n\nI wouldn't call that "so much olympic medals"
99048
There are actually two themes. The one you're probably referring to was written by Hollywood composer John Williams. It's called Summon the Heroes. TV stations don't play it when athletes win medals, but they do blast it whenever the host network goes to commercial, comes back from commercial, or airs a commercial about their stellar Olympic coverage.\n\nThe official Olympic Anthem was written by a Greek composer named Spyros Samaras and it's played far less often. Details on Samaras are sparse, but this page from the 2004 Summer Games in Athens includes a few interesting tidbits. Samaras, already well-known for his operas, worked with Greek poet Costis Palamas on the anthem. As far as we can tell, Palamas wrote the words first and Samaras added the music later. Perhaps we shouldn't admit this, but we didn't even know there were lyrics.\n\nThe anthem was first performed at the Summer Games in Athens in 1896. In 1958, the International Olympic Committee named it the official anthem of the Olympics, and it's been played at every opening ceremony since 1964 (according to Wikipedia). Not bad. Though in terms of royalties, we'd rather be John Williams. Ca-ching!
384004
An Olympic gold medal.
152094
There is no overall winner of the Olympics, but when compiling medal tables, the usual convention is:\n\nSort by the number of golds, if more than one country has the same number of golds then sort by silvers and if more than one country has the same number of silvers then sort by bronze. If more than one country has the same number of bronzes, then sort by alphabetical order of country where list is compiled.
312546
The Olympics games were not originally an international competition, they were held with in Greece.  They used to be male only competitions, and the men had to compete naked to prove they were male after a woman competed and beat some men somewhere back in history before they had to do it nude.\nThere are many more sports in the modern olympics than there were in the classic games, tho there are some that remain, mainly athletic events such as javelin, discus, jumps and running events.\nDuring the classical period the olympic movement did not have the same ideals as the modern one, and there were no winter olympics.\nThe 5 interlocking rings is a new symbol, though there was a torch in the classical period.\nThe games from classical greece were held to honour the gods, now they are used to spread a message about good sportsmanship and international co-operation.\nRules have become rationalised in the modern olympics, no doubt in the classic games the final decision was made by an important official, probably with a few favourites....
102849
Most gold medals (including Olympic gold medals) are gold-plated, exceptions being the Congressional Gold Medal and Nobel Prize winners' medals, which are solid gold.\n\nHere is some more info on the subject.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_medal
803534
Try this link:\nhttp://www.olympic.org/uk/athletes/results/search_r_uk.asp\nthis is a complete database of the Olympic medal winners from all the Olympics.\nis it's not enough try wikipedia
721646
Same reason why we have the olympics to re-unify the world and create a link between different countries. It's also just competitive nature and countries wanting to be better than the others, patriotism and supporting your country, take your pick
229401
Yes.\n\nFrom an Australian perspective, the three gold medals. The most memorable moment was the performance of Canadian weightlifter Marilou Dozois-Prevost in winning the silver medal in the women's weightlifting. She was a female weightlifter who looked like a woman. The other was the hailstorm interrupting the women's pairs in the lawn bowls between Canada and Swaziland.
164340
Each country is able to submit a team of performers....usually it's only three per event, but I guess sometimes its more.  Despite this, each athlete usually goes through qualifier rounds just to get to the finals..in which case you don't usually see more than 3 athletes per country.  They send three because the Olympics rewards three spots...Gold, Silver, and Bronze.  So rather than competing for the top spot, athletes compete for all three spots.  It's about being the world's best athlete...not the world's best athletic country.
1128027
usa is good in olympics ...that is all\nbesides American pride can get someone to be overconfident thus diminishing performance,
125465
they usally do have the souvenirs, if you go to the usa olympic web page (or whatever country) you can get the information you need.