I stumbled across a sports article from a US publication and thought it interesting that it showed the USA leading the medals table.
Instead of the regular table that gives weight to Gold, silver and bronze, they just see total medals.
I sorta like it. Celebrating all medal winners equally is nice. It feels a little like fudging the numbers, though.
It’s absurd. I can see having an issue with the official system, for example if one nation got 2nd in literally every single event the official system would put them near the bottom of the table, which is a little unfair. But giving equal weight is so, so much worse. I saw a meme the other day showing American swimmers on the 2nd and 3rd place podium and an Aussie in 1st, with a headline to the effect of “America beats Australia in swimming”. You don’t celebrate them all equally because they didn’t perform equally. The logical extension of that would be to sort merely by number of participants each country had. Which is absurd. Gold needs to be worth more than bronze for a system to even be worth considering.
A points system could be reasonable. My view is that 1 gold should be better than 2 silver, so 7-3-1 points is where I’d start. That would change the top from CN, FR, JP, AU, GB, SK, US, to FR, CN, US, AU, JP, GB, SK, if I’ve done my calculations correctly. You get the same order currently if you do 10-4-1 as points. But the conventional system is pretty good anyway.
I found the meme I mentioned above. Thank the gods for never closing old tabs 🙃
