For some Olympians, the media attention is just too much – even if they’ve grown up with it. The Daily Telegraph reports that Zara Phillips has been too busy dealing with the media to speak to her grandmother, the Queen, since her silver medal win in the eventing on Tuesday. Asked if she had received any message from the monarch, she told BBC Breakfast: “No not yet, I haven’t had time with all this media.” We love you too, Zara.

This week’s round-up features our favourite Olympic coach ever, plus sexy rugby and the Frisbee Disc Video Freestyle Jam

1) He was bow-legged, and he was a genius. Enjoy 511 seconds of Rivaldobongo.

2) A few bits of retro football. Gerrie Mühren’s legendary game of keepy-uppy for Ajax against Real Madrid; a stunning goal from Günter Netzer in 1973; and David Batty takes a right-hander off the ball.

3) England play their first Test against South Africa at Headingley since 2009. The ground is synonymous with some of the greatest moments in English cricket history: 1981, when Ian Botham and Bob Willis scripted an astonishing comeback win; 1991, when Graham Gooch made an immense 154 not out against the all-conquering West Indies (short version and long version); and 2000, when England thrashed West Indies by Friday evening (yes, the game did start on Thursday).

4) A job lot of the BBC’s fantastic Match of the 90s series are just a click away.

5) Young Michael Phelps.

6) The Olympishambles at the badminton this week reminded us of the 1994 Shell Caribbean Cup between Barbados and Grenada. We’re very sad.

Our favourites from last week’s blog

1) “The Games began with a pile of whitened bones, horses heads, the skulls of men nailed to trees … and a pack of chocolate disgestive biscuits” – Boris Johnson’s Olympic welcome, as reimagined by cassetteboy.

2) Madagascar play some seriously sexy rugby in World Cup qualifying.

3) Bert Le Clos was pretty pleased when his son bagged gold in the 200m butterfly but he’s got some way to go to match coach Lawrie Lawrence’s celebrations from 1988. And in other Great Aussie Post-Race Interviews: here’s Sally Pearson at the Beijing Olympics.

4) Just surreal – Footballers of the World

5) The Frisbee Disc Video Freestyle Jam – does what is says on the tin.

6) Classic Olympic road races: Montreal 1976, Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984.

Spotters’ badges: AndreLecounte, countbuckules, jamie12, brilliantusernamepun, Baccalieri, richardsmall, AdmiralCrunch

We all know who’s in the lead on the medal tables – but what would happen if you looked at them by population size, or GDP – or even compared to the number of athletes in each team? A team of statisticians has worked with us to bring you a new way of judging the Olympic Games
• Click here for the alternative medal ranking table
• Live: Medals adjusted for population
• Live: Medals adjusted for GDP
• Live: Medals adjusted by team size

• Get the data
• More Olympics data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian

How do you measure a team’s performance in the Olympics? The traditional way is to just count up the number of medals won. And the result? The biggest countries always come top: the Olympic ‘superpowers’ of the US, China, Russia, UK, Australia and Germany.

But what if the totals took account of factors that must have an influence, such as the size of a country’s population or its economic power, or compared it to the size of the athletic team in London?

The Royal Statistical Society and the Datablog have teamed up with four statisticians at Imperial College, London, to help us work out how those key factors might change the league table. By ‘weighting’ the medals, what happens to the results?

The team, Christoforos Anagnostopoulos, Giovanni Montana, Axel Gandy and Daniel Mortlock, looked at previous olympics and traditional indicators such as the output of a country’s economy (GDP), the size of its population – and also ways to weight the score by the size of each country’s Olympic team.

What’s the rationale? Take the 2008 results. The Bahamas had a population of approximately 334,000 in 2008, whereas the USA had 304,000,000 – almost 1,000 times larger. And yet the Bahamas won two medals, whereas the US 110 – 55 times as many. “Taking population into account,” says Anagnostopoulos, “It no longer seems obvious that the US should rank higher than the Bahamas. The intuition is that the US had a larger pool of possible athletes to choose from, and consequently it makes sense that it should do better, too”.

So, what will the results look like? Says Anagnostopoulos:

The simplest approach is to divide the number of medals by the population of each country. We will however look at other types of indices that might be harder to interpret directly. Consequently, to make the league table interpretable without reference to the underlying index, we express the results as a (weighted) medal count. As the Games progress, for each medal type (Bronze/Silver/Gold), we redistribute the medals that have been already won, taking into account the country’s population: for a small country, one medal will be worth more than for a larger country, and it may therefore end up with 2 or 3 medals, whereas the larger country “loses” some of its medals in order to correct for the advantage afforded to it by way of its larger population. The resulting medal count will depend on the relative sizes of the countries of the medal winners, and may change as more medals are added onto the database. We do the same for silvers and golds, as well as for total medal count

GDP, is another obvious one to re-size on, particularly when you consider how expensive sport equipment and training is. Moreover, since GDP also grows with population size, it implicitly also takes into account population size.

Although penalising larger wealthier countries may seem intuitively “fair”, our statistical team invites us to think harder about the potential arbitrariness of penalties and how they can be selected objectively. Anagnostopoulos explains:

We have been thinking of GDP (or population) as an “advantage” that needs to be “corrected for” by penalising. This however involves an arbitrary decision of how much to penalise by. A statistician would take a different, more objective view, where GDP is a factor that can, to some extent, explain the performance of various countries. A different, more objective view, would interpret GDP as a factor that can, to some extent, explain the performance of various countries. Once this explanatory potential is exhausted, what ‘is left’ (the statistical jargon for this is ‘residual’) can be interpreted as ‘GDP-corrected’ athletic skill – a purer measure. Crucially, we may then rely on sound principles of statistical modelling to determine fairly conclusively which index is the one that maximises the explanatory power of GDP (and/or population) in this context. The resulting measure is no longer a simple ratio, but a variant of a log scale, which carefully balances the numbers in a fairly complicated way. When the games are over, we will be able to analyse the results based on this work

Reassuringly, however, the main qualitative conclusion of the earlier league tables seems to persist: for instance, in 2008, Cuba comes top, with 24 medals but a small population and GDP. Not all “superpowers” are banished, but some are: Australia, China, and Russia maintain their positions in the top 20, whereas the UK and the US are no longer featured.

Team size is also a factor – and one which our team says may be a better indicator than either GDP or population as it has already taken that into account by team selection.

And this is what those results look like for for population and GDP, compared to team size: “A sharper linear relationship is evident after taking logarithms. Further analysis can fine-tune the index to capture as much as possible the effect of GDP and/or population on performance.” says Anagnostopoulos.

The full data is below – and we will update it throughout the Games. What can you do with it?

The alternative medal ranking table

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Live: Medals adjusted for population

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Live: Medals adjusted for GDP

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Live: Medals adjusted for team size

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Designers from R/GA Media Group have created an intricate visualisation of world records set in Olympic events from 1900 to the eve of London 2012

Zack Greinke traded to the Los Angeles Angels; Hanley Ramirez dealt to the Dodgers; Cincinnati Reds full steam without Joey Votto; Another busy weekend for the Boston Red Sox; British Baseball’s lost Olympic opportunity and World Baseball Classic news.

Snapshot

On Friday, with the 31 July non-waiver trade deadline approaching, Zack Greinke was dealt from the Milwaukee Brewers to the Los Angeles Angels for rookie shortstop Jean Segura and Double-A right-handers Ariel Pena and Johnny Hellweg. The acquisition of a proven front of the rotation starter is is confirmation of what most baseball fans already know – despite a .500 July, the third-place Halos can smell the World Series. Truth be told, after investing all that dough in Albert Pujols and CJ Wilson, the Angels had better make the playoffs and start earning the revenue that comes with post-season baseball. With October baseball on the line, giving up three of the organization’s top-10 prospects for a high-powered rental makes sense for a Los Angeles team in win-now mode. If Greinke, a soon to be free agent, walks away from the Angels after the season, then so be it.

Greinke is a weapon, one that has won in the American League before. In 2009, he found a way to go 16-9 with a 2.16 ERA on a Kansas City team that lost 97 games, accounting for nearly 25% of the Royals’ victories. In his Angels debut on Sunday, LA’s bats wasted a sterling effort by Greinke, who allowed just two runs in seven innings, striking out eight Rays batters while walking just one. Tampa won 2-0.

For me, the most interesting thing to come out of the trade of Greinke is a photograph that was taken by former teammate, John Axford. Shortly after news of the trade broke, Axford sent a snapshot out into the world via instagram, showing Greinke surrounded by teammates that are sad to see him go. The caption read:

“in the words of Lloyd Christmas, “I hate goodbyes”! #ZackWillBeMissed

The photo offers some insight into the relationships between players who spend an enormous amount of time with each other, the camaraderie of a clubhouse, and of course, the business of baseball. It’s obvious that Greinke’s teammates thought a lot of him, that he meant more to the team than just wins and strikeouts. It’s an authentic, impromptu baseball moment, thankfully shared with all.

All Han-ds on deck

The Angels weren’t the only LA team making moves last week. The Dodgers, a team desperate for offense, acquired Hanley Ramirez from sellers Miami on Tuesday. Just four Dodgers, Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, AJ Ellis and James Loney, were everyday players in LA’s line-up, the remaining positions involved platooning players. With Ramirez made available by the Marlins, Dodgers GM Ned Colletti jumped on the opportunity, dealing Nathan Eovaldi and Scott McGough for reliever Randy Choate and Ramirez.

It’s a gamble for Los Angeles, who are on the hook for over $30m over the next two seasons for a player who has been on a downward spiral since winning the batting title in 2009. At the time of the deal, Ramirez was hitting .246, a shadow of the franchise player he once was, never mind his attitude issues. Colletti was clearly banking on the old change of scenery thing working out, and so far the early returns are positive, hitting a 10th-inning home run at San Francisco on Friday night.

Randy Choate told the Los Angeles Times: “It seemed there were a lot of expectations [in Miami] fell solely on him and a lot of blame fell solely on him. It just seemed the more that we started failing, the more he started getting blamed.”

Ramirez said to the Times

“I’m happy, I’m relaxed. My mind is completely clean. … We got a chance. It’s a different feeling.”

In his first five games the Dodgers have averaged nearly 1.5 more runs per game with Ramirez in the line-up, while the 28-year-old hit for a 1.036 OPS compared with .749 in Miami. Los Angeles swept their three-game series with the hated Giants, to move LA into a tie for first place in the NL West, while panic buttons were pressed in the Pacific Northwest. The San Jose Mercury news sounded the alarm Sunday:

“Must make a trade! The Dodgers look invincible with Hanley Ramirez! The Giants MUST respond by getting a big bat NOW NOW NOW!”

The clock is ticking on the Giants and the rest of baseball with the deadline for non-waiver trades set to come and go on Tuesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the White Sox made their big move on Saturday, dealing for inconsistent Twins starting pitcher Francisco Liriano in exchange for infielder Eduardo Escobar and lefty Pedro Hernandez. Depending on which Liriano takes to the hill, the Sox could have a game-changing front of the rotation starter, or the pitcher who is 3-10 with an ERA over 5.00 this season. He’ll face his former team in Minnesota on Tuesday.

Red with envy

OK, who had the Reds being able to rip off 10 straight, their longest winning streak of the season, without their franchise slugger Joey Votto? I feel like I’ve been asking a lot of questions like that this year… Anyway, as the old hardball cliche goes, baseball is indeed a funny game, and we should never, ever, ever be surprised or shocked by what it throws at us.

The Reds are hot, scorching hot, and happen to be tearing it up without their one-time MVP in the lineup. So, how do the Reds make up for all that firepower? Like any team called “Reds”, collectively. Heading into Monday, the Reds are 11-3 since Votto landed on the shelf, Brandon Phillips is hitting .372 with two homers and four doubles in the last two weeks, Ryan Ludwick is hitting .417 over the past week, while Drew Stubbs has provided timely hitting and a .950 OPS over the past 14 games, that’s after batting in the low 200′s all season long. Without Votto, Cincinnati have scored more runs per game than they have averaged all season long. How about that?!

And while all of this offense is helping fill the gaping hole left by Votto, the 2012 Reds continue to show that they are a team led by its pitching staff. In fact, the Reds have used just five starting pitchers through their first 100 games, something they haven’t done in, say, 114 years, which is a very, very long time. More than just healthy, Cincinnati pitchers are effective, especially as of late. Mike Leake has given up more than two earned runs just once in his previous seven starts, while Bronson Arroyo has lowered his ERA by more than a half run over his past six outings. Meanwhile, Mat Latos, acquired over the winter to provide that young starter bursting with ace potential, has only allowed more than two earned runs just once in his previous six starts. Yes, the Reds starters can throw and their bullpen is deep.

Even if the Pittsburgh Pirates are getting all the attention these days, (and really, why not, being in their first bona fide pennant race in 19 years), Dusty Baker’s first-place Reds, flying well below the radar, are deserving of the three game lead they hold over the Bucs.

You have to laugh…

Bobby Valentine said on Saturday “We’ve got drama. We’ve got pre-game drama, we’ve got in-game drama, and we’ve got post-game drama. Man, we’ve got drama.” Some baseball fans think the polarizing Valentine is wrong about everything, but who after watching the goings on in Boston in 2012 could deny the truth in those words?

Valentine’s in-game drama this weekend came on Sunday night when he was ejected during Boston’s 3-2 victory over the New York Yankees, one that sealed a series win during their first visit to Yankee Stadium this season. That was the least of the action in and around the Red Sox clubhouse last week.

There were rumors of a deal to trade Carl Crawford to Miami for Jose Reyes, rumblings that made their way through Fenway via the New York Post’s Joel Sherman. Later in the week, an unnamed baseball executive said that Ben Cherington was trying to find a way to get Josh Beckett out of town, a rumor eventually denied by the Sox GM.

Then, after the Yanks pasted Boston 10-3 on Friday’s series opener, Dustin Pedroia sounded off.

“The first 100 games have been [expletive],” Pedroia told reporters. “We’re two games under .500 and we’re the Boston Red Sox. If everyone is thrilled about where we’re at, we need to re-evaluate because I don’t like losing. We need to play better, man.”

There was more:

“Our at bats later in the game were not good,” Pedroia said. “We’re swinging early in the count. Heck, if their eighth-inning guy is going to come into the game, let’s at least get 25-30 pitches, so maybe he can’t pitch tomorrow. Do something productive and we’re not doing that. That’s a sign of not a winning team.”

All this from the Sox second baseman, while Valentine sung a different tune about his cellar-dwelling Sox:

“We’ll turn it around. We haven’t had our big streak yet. That’s the good news.”

In case that outburst wasn’t enough for Sox fans, Saturday saw Terry Francona make an appearance in his former clubhouse. The ex-Boston manager, who was fired after the team collapsed last September, was visiting Cody Ross, gathering information for his current gig as an ESPN analyst. That one-on-one chat quickly transformed into Francona holding clubhouse court for roughly a half-hour with a host of his former players including Dustin Pedroia, Clay Buchholz, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Nick Punto and David Ortiz. Valentine and Francona, who sparred in the press earlier this season, would later meet for an informational session as is normal for ESPN broadcasters to do. Francona would later text Valentine to apologize for causing any hubbub.

There was also continued discussion surrounding the documentary film Valentine executive produced called “Ballplayer: Pelotero” which focuses on some of the dodgy dealings that used to take place surrounding the signing of baseball players from Dominican Republic, a process that Major League Baseball has improved over the past couple of years.

The film drew the ire of Bud Selig earlier in July, and the commissioner let Valentine’s employers know of his displeasure. The Sox manager defended the work on Friday.

“They made a good film. Someone looks at this and has been in baseball a while, been in Asia, been in Korea, been in Taiwan, been in Venezuela, it’s the way of the land. You think when I was being signed they didn’t try to tell me some things that weren’t true? Of course.”

Just another odd moment in a season of never ending odd moments.

And despite the wacky week in Beantown, and everything else that has gone down in Back Bay thus far in 2012, rather incredibly, the Sox are just four games out of a wild card spot heading into Monday’s games.

No Olympic baseball in Blighty

These were supposed to be banner days for the British Baseball Federation. Had baseball been played at these Olympic Games, it would have meant construction of a bona fide baseball venue in London (not to mention softball), and a Great Britain team playing on an Olympic level, which, at least in theory, could have provided a springboard for the growth of the sport in the UK.

In 2005, two days after the Olympics were awarded to London, both baseball and softball were voted out of the Games, and today, the good people at the BBF are standing outside of their own house without a ticket to the big party in their backyard, a crushing blow to all involved in British baseball, especially considering how close they were to realizing one of their major goals. Josh Chetwynd, former co-host of MLB on Five UK, was playing for GB when the sport was dropped.

“We all knew what a difference this sort of high-profile event could have on interest in the game, and, equally as important – if not more so – creating a legacy facility. As cliche as it sounds, there is a “if you build it, they will come” phenomenon with baseball. GB baseball has lagged terribly behind other European countries in terms of infrastructure. This could have started the process of turning things around.”

They’re not alone of course, other countries looked forward to playing baseball at the Games as well – Cuba can’t be too pleased. The International Baseball Federation has joined forces with the International Softball Federation in what will be a joint bid to get back into the IOC fold for 2020.

Meanwhile, Major League Baseball, the MLB Players Association, along with the leagues and players associations of other professional leagues worldwide, have succeeded in bringing their biggest stars to the plate with the World Baseball Classic, a tournament sanctioned by the IBAF, which began in 2006. Perhaps seeking to generate some international news ahead of the Olympics, MLB announced on Wednesday that they had awarded the final of the 2013 to AT&T Park in San Francisco. Games in earlier rounds will take place at the new Marlins ballpark in Miami, Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona and the Salt River Fields in Scottsdale, Arizona. There will be an additional international venue to be determined at a later date.

When the event is played next year, for the first time, it will feature teams that had to qualify, 12 of which are new to the tournament. Great Britain will get its chance to make up for a lost Olympic opportunity when they face Germany, Czech Republic and, believe it or not, Canada, who were forced to qualify after not winning a game in the previous tournament. The winner of the group stage, to be played September 20th to 24th in Regensburg, Germany, will be invited to the WBC next spring. Three other groups of four will also play for the right to participate, including non-traditional baseball countries such as Israel, New Zealand, Thailand, Brazil and the Philippines – a sign that the sports’ global reach is on the rise despite losing its place in the Olympic program.

Rolling report: Will Team GB continue their charge for the podium? Join Barry Glendenning for the latest news

Rolling report: Today’s highlights include Britain’s equestrian team going for gold. Join Paul Owen for all the news

• Paul Owen with all today’s Olympics news
• Immerse yourself in our second screen experience
• Today’s events at the 30th Olympiad
• Medal table so far
• Contact me at paul.owen@guardian.co.uk or @paultowen

Tim Berners-Lee? Who’s that? Madagascar? Oh, like the kids movie! If you’re going to make us wait hours to watch the ceremony live, NBC, the least you could have done is keep quiet

As the Olympic torch was lit in London at the end of a three-and-a-half-hour ceremony live blogged and tweeted across the globe, NBC finally began to broadcast the show – to Americans on the east coast (west coast viewers had to wait another three hours for their turn).

Commentators Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira reunited for the cameras as if it was Beijing 2008 – or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, or just a regular morning in 2011.

Theirs was the job of interpreting, explaining and trampling all over Danny Boyle’s fast-paced, high-def presentation of Great Britain from the time of maypoles and hay bales to the current day. And they did what they were paid to do.

In the early part of the broadcast, commentary was restrained. Matt and Meredith didn’t speak over every song, and they only interrupted each other every so often.

Much of the early local cultural references may have been lost on a US audience, and to their credit the cheery duo did a valiant job trying to explain the Beefeaters, the Industrial Revolution, and the National Health Service.

“Some very big surprises lie ahead,” said Matt cutting to a commercial break as reports of the show from those who had watched it live began to flood the internet.

He was referring to the “entry” of Her Majesty the Queen into the Olympic Stadium. Matt was beside himself at the prospect of it. He was DYING to tell us what would happen.

Luckily for us the set up for the Queen’s entrance was a video of Daniel Craig as James Bond escorting her into a helicopter.

In a rare display of self-control NBC let the pre-shot video sections of the ceremony play without interruption. As Matt Lauer would say, “We thank them for that.”

Meredith disappeared two hours into the show and Matt was joined by Parade of Nations veteran Bob Costas for the marathon task of introducing the individual nations to America.

The two men lobbed their factoids of “Olympic trivia” as they called them back and forth with fluent ease.

A couple of examples from Matt, who edged out Bob for the gold medal in triviality: “From the I-did-not-know-that-file, Denmark is the most competitive non-Asian country in Badminton.”

And, “Madagascar – for our younger viewers a country associated with a few animated movies.”

At this point of the broadcast a Storify called Shut Up Matt Lauer began to circulate on Twitter.

The most egregious moment of commentary had come earlier when Matt and Meredith mentioned that there was to be a tribute to “someone” called Tim Berners-Lee.

“If you haven’t heard of him, we haven’t either,” chuckled Meredith about the inventor of the world wide web sitting on stage.

“Google him,” laughed Matt with no apparent sense of irony.

Three and half hours into the broadcast the United States team appeared in the Parade of Nations and promptly took out their cellphones, snapping pictures and shooting videos of each other as they walked through the stadium.

It was an odd moment that somehow synthesized the lack of spontaneity of the whole television experience.

Ten minutes later the home team of Brits finally entered to David Bowie’s Heroes, a blizzard of white confetti, and an overwhelming roar of gusty cheering.

“Let’s sit back and listen,” said Bob. And we did – for 20 seconds before Matt started up again.

“Seven billion pieces of paper have just been released into the air over
this Olympic Stadium …”

By now the two men just couldn’t stop. They talked all the way through The Arctic Monkeys singing Come Together. They talked through the stadium announcers.

They briefly held back for Sebastian Coe, chairman of the London Olympic Committee, and for the Queen, who declared the Games officially open.

But the minute the Olympic flag appeared at the end of her words they started up again. And from then on they didn’t stop talking till the fireworks at the end. If only NBC had cut some of their banality.

But the network chose to let them run on in their entirety.

Other portions of the ceremony weren’t so lucky. The Sex Pistol’s Pretty Vacant was largely missing from NBC’s coverage, other than the briefest of snippets either side of yet another commercial break.

Meanwhile, the lesbian kiss never made it onto American television, nor did the arrival of Saudi Arabia’s first female athletes or the tribute to terrorism victims.

Instead, as a taste of what we can expect in the days and weeks to come, NBC interrupted exciting and emotional television for a static Ryan Seacrest studio interview with Michael Phelps.

By the end of the night three and a half hours of live action had become four and a half hours of tedium and #nbcfail was trending on Twitter. It was an award rightly earned.

Anyone who watched the Olympic opening ceremony on NBC may want to know a little more about the bloke with the computer

Age: 57

Who is he? One of the stars of the Olympic opening ceremony.

Which one? When the house thingy was lifted off the stage at the end of the music dance mix, he was the bloke sitting next to a computer.

It’s coming back to me. Didn’t he write Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber? Er … no. That was Sir Tim Rice.

I give up then. Are you having a laugh?

No. I was watching it on NBC in the US and neither of their two commentators, Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer, had a clue who Sir Tim was. Incredible. I hadn’t realised there were any commentators even stupider than our own Trevor Nelson.

Apparently so. But can you just put me out of my misery and tell me who Sir Tim Berners-Lee is? He’s only the inventor of the world wide web.

What’s that? Do you have an IQ?

Relax. I was only kidding. Of course I know what the world wide web is. I’m just not sure why an American was taking centre stage in London. He’s not American. He’s British.

Now it’s your turn to have a laugh. Everyone knows everything to do with the internet started in the US. If it makes you feel better he is now a professor at MIT. But he was working at Cern in 1989 when he created a way of linking hypertext to the internet. The first website – info.cern.ch – went online in 1991.

So he must be a billionaire like Bill Gates by now? He’s very comfortably off with about $50m in the bank. But he never set out to turn his idea into a moneymaking scheme for himself.

You mean, he created the means by which Google and Amazon could print money and he didn’t try to cash in? Precisely.

What a loser. No wonder no one in the US has heard of him. We rather admire that and were a great deal more pleased to see him at the opening ceremony than Paul McCartney.

Don’t say: Do you think the Queen knows who Sir Tim is?

Do say: You’d be bored if you had to sit next to Jacques Rogge for three and a half hours