Calblog

To make your riddle more confusing, Tim Duncan was born in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Yet plays for the US, and not the "Virgin Islands" team.

Because it's considered to be a seperate nation which is under the legal jurisdiction of the United States. There are a number of such places, most of them island countries, which are not legally independant but which the olympic committee recognizes as seperate national entities:

Bermuda
The British Virgin Islands
The Cayman Islands
The Netherlands Antilles
Puerto Rico
The US Virgin Islands
Hong Kong
American Samoa
The Cook Islands

im still struggling with the fact nba players play on our olympic team...next i'll struggle with how puerto rico beat our professional olympic team.

Mike - Its not even a "professional olympic" team like other nations have. The other international teams play year round, where as the nba filled team of all-stars play together a few weeks and have to learn a new system and how to work as a team. Sure if your talent is far superior to everyone else's its no big deal, but as other parts of the world get better players it makes the teamwork more important to sucess. But they should of beat Puerto Rico.

aphrael - The recognizing of the island nations isn't very strict as refrenced by the Tim Duncan example. But Duncan has a better chance at a medal on the US team the the US Virgin Islands Team.

I don't understand the rules for who gets to play on what team. :)

For what it's worth, though, in concept this is no more striking than the fact that Scotland and Wales get seperate teams in the football world cup.

I've wondered at that myself, but it appears the IOC has a confused sense of nationality.

aphrael, don't forget Taiwan, I mean, "Chinese Taipei".

So lets see... "One China", "One country, two systems", and "One China, three teams"?

3x the teams == 3x the chances of gold?

I was just suprised to see the IOC recognize Israel as a state. It was a given that Palestine would have its own team.

Hockey is a lot of fun to look at, since the NHL is arguably the most international of the pro sports leagues.

A surprising number of North American players have dual citizenships, as a result of being Canadian-born, but US residents, or even being second-generation pro hockey players, being born in the US of Canadian fathers.

Also, a good number of players defected prior to the fall of the Iron Curtain and became citizens of the US or Canada. As the global political landscape changed, the players found that they could go back to play for the new nations in their old homelands.