Monday, August 18, 2008

National Anthems

A quick post for any of you that missed the Guardian's review of national anthems. This is certainly worth checking out even if you aren't following the Olympics. I also quite like the Haitian anthem which didn't make the top ten.

I don't think Haiti are likely to hear their anthem playing in Beijing, though they did get a silver medal in the Amsterdam 1928 games in the long jump....

While looking at this I saw that town planning, sculpture, painting, music and literature got Olympic medals up until 1948. This led to the oldest Olympic medallist, British graphic artist John Copley who was awarded the Silver medal for his design "Polo Player" at the age of 73.

The IOC no longer includes these within it's medal tables unfortunately, so the oldest sporting medal winner is counted as Oscar Swahn, who won two golds in shooting London 1908, but followed that up with a Silver in 1920 when he was 72 years old. This was in the team double shot running deer contest.

Enough stats for now.

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