International Sailing Federation Technical Delegate Alastair Fox stated, "At Beijing 2008 we had 400 sailors from 62 nations and at London 2012 we will see 380 sailors representing 63 nations. This shows the spread of our sport that has occurred in the last four years."
Spread? One more nation is "spread"?
7 comments:
In 2008 for every sailor there were 0.155countries represented. In 2012 for every sailor there were 0.165 countries represented. In increase of almost 7%. Or if you compare 63 countries to 62 countries, an increase of less than 2%.
Not exactly breathtaking.
I was trying to think of a way to rationalize the choice of the term "spread", but just can't come up with anything. sure you added 1 country (that less than 2% bump), but you also lost 5% of the number of sailors?! how is that "spread"? bizarre.
To be fair the context of the quote is that it comes after a discussion of how places at the Olympics have been assigned to such smaller nations as COK, LCA, MON and MNE, and how a couple of unused places were given to EGY and KGZ. It could well be that this is indicative of a "spread" of Olympic sailing to countries that haven't qualified for sailing at the Olympics before. But if the total number of nations only increased by one, then it has come at the expense of other nations not going to the Olympics for sailing this year.
I feel a spreadsheet coming on, shortly to be followed by a highly analytical, not to say anal retentive, post full of 3-letter country names that nobody knows.
just remember that 62.5% of all statistics are made up.
Which countries didn't send sailors this time?
Good question. Anyone know?
Two per cent rise over the past four years?
This must be the "spread of our sport" they're talking about.
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