EU hails own ‘great success’ at ‘exceptional’ Beijing Olympics

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday (24 August) expressed his congratulations to French and EU athletes on their “great success” at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In the meantime, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogue labelled the Beijing Games “exceptional”.

The fact that that EU countries as a whole brought home a total of 280 medals, including 87 gold, 101 silver and 92 bronze medals, is a victory for all people of the EU, Sarkozy said. 

In the meantime, an EU federalist association said the EU should compete under a single banner. Such a collective count, according to the Young European Federalists, would put the EU ahead of China and the US, both in terms of gold and total medals. 

But others argue that while it cannot be denied that EU countries overall did well at the Beijing Olympics, it would not be fair to add up the number of medals obtained by the 27 countries to evaluate the ‘weight’ of the Union had it competed as a single entity. Indeed, across the various disciplines, EU countries had the chance to compete with many teams instead of one, and in fact teams from EU countries also often competed between themselves. 

China has the biggest number of gold medals, while the US has the largest number of medals overall. The Chinese hosts won 51 gold medals and 100 medals overall, while the US has 36 gold medals and 110 medals overall. Russia came third with 23 gold medals and 72 medals overall. The most successful EU nation, Great Britain, ranked fourth, with 19 gold medals and 47 medals overall, and will organise the next games in 2012. 

In fact, Britain is particularly opposed to the idea of having the EU run under one flag, with a British shadow Europe Minister saying the “bonkers” Young European Federalists “really need to grow up”. 

In any case, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) resists putting medal counts at the centre of public attention. During the Cold War, the unofficial medal count between the USA and the USSR was, according to David Wallechinsky, author of ‘The Complete Book of the Summer Olympics’, like a “surrogate war going on”. 

The Belgian president of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, was careful not to repeat mistakes made in the past by calling the current Olympics “the best”. But despite the controversy surrounding China as a host, he was unambiguous in his praise of the country’s extraordinary effort to put on a great Games. 

“Thank you to the people of China. Through these Games, the world learned more about China, and China learned more about the world […] These were truly exceptional games,” Rogge said. 

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