Who won the Olympics?
We all know that the host nation China won the largest number of gold medals (51) which, in the official ranking, puts them top. But, if you count all the medals, then the USA leads with 110.
But, suppose you didn’t count all the medals equally. Say you gave three points for a gold, two for a silver, and one for a bronze. Sounds reasonable. And, suppose you took into account population size. Seems fair.
On this calculation, China – the official winner – only comes 65th. Great Britain – officially fourth – comes 22nd. Sorry, guys.
Which country do you think would be top then? You’ll never guess – but you can check it out here.
October 8th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
This seems like a biased way to do it too.
In the old system, large superpowers came out on top.
The way you have it puts all of the poor countries with large populations (50,000,000+) at the bottom, even if they have significantly better Olympic teams than small poor countries. I understand why your breakdown pans out this way, I just don’t think it is any less biaised than the other way, since the state of athletics in a nation like Zambia or Laos, and certainly Afghanistan, is far worse than it is in India. If two countries tie in medals, they have performed equally. The larger one should not lose because with more people they had a “better chance,” that is athletic Socialism. What about countries ranked by Purchasing Power Parity? Or GDP? Or number of cattle, for all the direct relevance any of these have to performance in sports. Athletes in smaller countries are no less likely to be successful than those in large ones.