it seems a little arbitrary having medals for both freestyle and also backstroke, butterfly, etc. Like, in track and field there’s not a 100m “running backwards” event. Why are there so many medals for swimming? Who decided it was that important relative to other forms of physical endeavor?
It also seems awkward in comparison to olympic weightlifting, which has TWO different lifts as part of a single event. I understand that they already bracket it by weight classes, but why not break it into a medal for the clean-and-jerk and another for the snatch? Or alternatively, add other events that test strength and precision?
I’m okay if the answer is just “that’s how it’s always been” and general path-dependence, but it seems a bit odd.
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Swimming, and gymnastics are ‘over represented’ at the Olympics, and many athletes get to compete in more than one event because the disciplines are all so similar.
This means that countries that produce athletes good at swimming or gymnastics get to have a higher tally of gold medals.
The IOC is politically connected and get encouraged to include events in certain sports. Cold War shenanigans ahoy.
The USA has good swimmers
Russia/USSR has good gymnasts
tl;dr there are more events in swimming than weightlifting because America wanted more gold medals. Russia did the same with gymnastics. Cycling is also over represented these days because Europe is good at that.
Other countries lack the political clout ($$$) to ‘encourage’ events that they’re good at.
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