Christina - I thought you might like this blog post that has graphed out number of showing gold medals won per million people (on the y-axis) and per billion GDP dollars (x-axis) back in 2008, in Beijing.. now they just need to do it for London. http://www.sportsscientists.com/2012/08/london-day-10-400m-success-gene-pools.html

Karen - You'll love this - I was in a baby boutiuqe and saw a new mommie walking in WEARING 5 INCH HEELS. Seriously. Carrying carseat and all. I'm sure she gives lessons!

tim poole - Melissa, since I don't have wedding photos to blog about yet, my posts the last few days have been about my memories of the Olympics since 1968. The medal counting was so important during the Cold War, because the Olympics were sort of a substitute for actually nuking each other. Like if we have more medals than the Commies, they won't want to go to war with is. The cold war is over, so the medal count is holdover from that time, and not nearly as important to th US psychy as it was 22 years ago.

Melli - The US is not the only nation to do a medal count, Germany obsesses over it too. Even worse, when we did not have a medal on day 2 yet, they called it a false start for the Olympic team. Hate this sense of entitlement. Our "community college" offers highheel-walking lessons, but I guess that is a bit far off from where you are. The Russians however have an interesting competition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1ymnOMLMHk