Us news papers count medals - each, gold, silver or bronze, accounts for one. yet I feel gold should equal 3, silver 2 and bronze 1 point each…isn’t this is better reference for overall performance?
In Germany they have always counted “most gold medals” then as the next tie breaker “most silver medals” etc. In this scenario China has been ahead of the US all along.
The US media is just trying to spin that they are “winning” the Olympics.It has always been,Gold trumps everything.
The 35 gold medals that China have won is way,way,way more impressive than the 19 gold that the US has won.
The Chinese will be in front of the total medal count soon anyway then the US media will have to find another way of spinning the stats in their favour.
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In Germany they have always counted “most gold medals” then as the next tie breaker “most silver medals” etc. In this scenario China has been ahead of the US all along.
That’s the official way of doing the ranking: http://results.beijing2008.cn/.../95A/GL0000000.shtml
American medias has apparently chose another way to do the ranking to make it look like USA leads ahead of China.
Yup, only one country counts them the USA way…
**The 35 gold medals that China have won is way,way,way more impressive than the 19 gold that the US has won. **
I think what is most impressive is the number of different gold medal winners China has to date. They will likely increase that is we get into the individual gymnastics finals. I also thought the U.S would really start flying in the track events but the sprinting events seem to be slipping from them a little. I love it when you see a lot of different countries winning gold.
Jamaica is going to have a great 4x100 relay.
I thought Germany just did that because it was in their favor. 
If a country starts from scratch and want to do good in these medal rankings, they “just” have to do good in a sport like swimming where tons of medals are thrown at the athletes because of way too many disciplines/distances.
Don’t spend you money on creating e.g. a good soccer team where there’s only one medal to get and requires a lot of athletes to create a good team. A sport like swimming “only” requires one very good athlete to win many medals. Many of the gold medal winning swimmers win more than one medal, not just that guy who won 8 gold medals.
How does the US and the rest of the world count medals in relays? Is it one Gold Medal for stats, or four?
Medals are counted per event not per athlete.One relay event has one gold medal for the tally.
Another example:Canada just won the mens eight in rowing which means one gold for Canada on the tally but nine medals handed out to the athletes in that crew.
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The US media is just trying to spin that they are “winning” the Olympics.It has always been,Gold trumps everything.
The 35 gold medals that China have won is way,way,way more impressive than the 19 gold that the US has won.
The Chinese will be in front of the total medal count soon anyway then the US media will have to find another way of spinning the stats in their favour.
I think that the number of gold medals is indicative of individual efforts. Total medal count though shows the depth of skill and strength of the entire program. My son’s swim team won a lot of meets this past year because of the number of 2nds and 3rds they took, while really only having 2 swimmers who were threats to win their events everytime they got in the water. A lot of the teams we would race could take first in all but the relays but then their next swimmer would be 4th or 5th. That is not the measure of a great team in my opinion.
Bernie
Yup, only one country counts them the USA way…
And we’re only doing it that way this year. Rest assured if the situation with China reverses itself we’ll be emphasizing Golds and China will be ranking by total medals. I think pretty much any country would do likewise if they were in the same situation.
US (only) counts like that in the Winter olympics too.
So, if the winner of an event is not from the US, but we got silver and bronze, we can still pretend we’re number one!
It’s very simple really, just simple math…
Gold medal winners= # total of golds
Silver medal winners= # total of silver
Bronze medal winners= # of total of bronze
Add them all up= # ot total medals
So as I see it, you can cherry pick 4 different categories to suit your needs. Although I haven’t seen any country touting that they have the most silver, or bronze. Now that I think of it, you could cherry pick any combination of the medals too. Most Gold/Bronze, Silver/Bronze, ect., ect. So that would be a lot more categories to chose from. Have at it all you stat geeks…(-;
I agree, I have always thought the medal count was childish.
But maybe it should go per capita? Of course the US and China will get a lot of medals, cuz they have a lot of people.
Per capita, the winners are
- Armenia (2) - 1,484,293
- Australia (10) - 2,060,086
- Slovakia (2) - 2,622,375
- Azerbaijan (3) - 2,725,905
- Finland (2) - 2,727,704
- North Korea (7) - 3,354,156
- South Korea (12) - 4,102,737
- Austria (2) - 4,102,767
- The Netherlands (4) - 4,161,328
- Croatia (1) - 4,491,543
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/olympics_blog/2008/08/speaking-of-ind.html
US is 30 and China is 40
Number of gold is the way to do it. It indicates who the best is.
Total medals speaks to being competitive, but gold speaks to who the best is.
Right now…it’s China (even if i am skeptical of their programs for some reason…i have no proof, and could easily be wrong…i just don’t feel they are on the up and up).
Seems kind of a silly thing to focus on in general. Medal or not, the athletes are pushing each other to be their best and, overwhelmingly, everyone is being pretty good sports. I always find it impressive to see these tiny countries with 4 athletes with no chance of winning out there and once in a while, one of them slips in and steals one (Togo got a bronze in Kayaking I think?)
It’s like watching Costas having a discussion about who the greater swimmer is: Phelps or Spitzer. Does it really matter?
How about counting the medals according to country the athlete trains in?
The count would be more like USA 160 China 60. I don’t think that many Chinese athletes train in the states. In fact Yao Ming may be the exception.
Or non swimming countries like Tunisia having the biggest upset in the pool at these Olympics but no one mentioning it because Phelps gets all the (deserved) attention…