I was born and pretty much raised in USSR (Ukraine), and therefore when it comes to sports – not war/politics and definitely not nationalism/silly Soviet patriotism, it makes me feel happy when any of the 15 USSR (former) republics athletes achieve gold/silver/bronze or just a good notable performance.
As a kid, I went to Children’s Olympic Reserve School doing sport gymnastics for several years, where I could see how high our standards were and just how important the role of sport was on the grand scale of things in the country.
So I was looking at “Overall Medal Standings” at the end of 2008 Olympics and came to an interesting conclusion:
| NOC Name | Total Gold | Total Medals |
| Russia | 23 | 72 |
| Ukraine | 7 | 27 |
| Belarus | 4 | 19 |
| Georgia | 3 | 6 |
| Kazakhstan | 2 | 13 |
| Azerbaijan | 1 | 7 |
| Uzbekistan | 1 | 6 |
| Latvia | 1 | 3 |
| Estonia | 1 | 2 |
| Lithuania | 0 | 5 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 0 | 2 |
| Tajikistan | 0 | 2 |
| Armenia | 0 | 6 |
| Moldova | 0 | 1 |
| Total: | 43 | 171 |
As the table above shows the (formerly :) ) strong USSR could have taken 43 gold medals, which is 7 medals ahead of US, but still leaves USSR at the second “gold” place after China, however it would take 171 total medals which would make it a 2008 Olympics winner by the total medal count!
One “the very true” argument could be “foo get abour it, USSR is no more” – true. But I was mentally flipping pages through the history, combining the medals of Roman Empire, Osman Empire, and even Delian League, but their medal count did not come even close the third place. (“Persian Empire” came pretty close actually :) )
Just wanted to bounce it against people of www ;)