Olympic Bragging – Medals, Medal Counts & Other Observations by Louis Evan Palmer
Another Olympics, Beijing 2008, has finished with an especially sublime opening ceremony to remember it by. And world records by Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt. Even if Michael's unlikely run seemed a little too luck-struck by half. How long was the Croatian swimmer suspended in the water about a single millimeter from the touch bar? There has been the requisite chest thumping and teeth gnashing. Medals counts broadcast and fawned over. Reporting that probably can't help being boosterish although a few stars so overshadowed everyone else that we could cheer for them without impairing our patriotic credentials. Usain Bolt leaps to mind.
We were told ad nauseum that the USA “won” the 2008 Olympics because they won the most medals. This is almost equivalent to saying that if China won 49 gold medals and the USA won 50 bronze medals then the US “won”. In effect, we are weighting gold, silver and bronze the same which doesn't make sense even to the great unwashed hordes.
Simon Forsthye, a researcher in Brisbane, Australia has worked on several more logical ways of representing medal counts. The first mandatory step is to weight the medal count. He and others rate gold as twice the value of silver which, in turn, is rated twice the value of bronze – therefore, gold counts as 4, silver as 2 and bronze as 1.
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We can be sure if the ranking was more favourable to the USA if it was weighted, we would have seen it that way instead. The mass audience would have been educated as required. The slant in the western media is, in this case, blatant. If they can educate people about some of the obscure “sports” they have in the Olympics like biathlon or equestrian or sailing then a simple weighted medal count is child's play.
Some argue that medal counts should only focus on gold. In fact, this is completely backwards, For some sports, where there is a lot of competition and it is therefore more difficult to place, we should have more than just 3 medals. Marathons with hundreds of runners and some other track events come to mind. For those events, 5 medals seems more appropriate. Say, a brass medal for fourth place and copper for fifth place.
Here is a partial table using data on Simon Forsythe's site. The first column showing an unweighted medal count is the tally that was almost exclusively used by the mass media. Followed by the rank if the medals are weighted (4 for gold, etc). The last 2 ranks are by population, per 1 million persons, and by GDP (per 1 trillion $). It attempts to account for population and wealth assuming that it is easier for a populous or wealthy country to compete well.
| Country | RANK Unweighted Medal | RANK weighted medals | RANK Weighted medals per million POP | RANK weighted medals per billion GDP |
| United States | 1 | 2 | 43 | 65 |
| China | 2 | 1 | 65 | 50 |
| Russian Fed. | 3 | 3 | 34 | 38 |
| Great Britain | 4 | 4 | 22 | 44 |
| Australia | 5 | 5 | 6 | 27 |
| Germany | 6 | 6 | 33 | 52 |
| France | 7 | 8 | 32 | 51 |
| Korea | 8 | 7 | 24 | 42 |
| Italy | 9 | 9 | 37 | 53 |
On the vein of Olympic sports, the Olympic head body should publish the criteria for what constitutes a “sport” or “event” including requirements such as a certain threshold of persons who actually play or participate in a given sport or event. For example, should we continue with equestrian events – very expensive with relatively few participants, it seems to qualify as the epitome of elitist events.
The weighted medal count rank is shown below. Countries like China and Jamaica with high gold medal counts benefit from this more accurate tally.
| Country | RANK Unweighted Medal | RANK weighted medals | RANK Weighted medals per million POP | RANK weighted medals per billion GDP |
| China | 2 | 1 | 65 | 50 |
| United States | 1 | 2 | 43 | 65 |
| Russian Fed. | 3 | 3 | 34 | 38 |
| Great Britain | 4 | 4 | 22 | 44 |
| Australia | 5 | 5 | 6 | 27 |
| Germany | 6 | 6 | 33 | 52 |
| Korea | 8 | 7 | 24 | 42 |
| France | 7 | 8 | 32 | 51 |
| Italy | 9 | 9 | 37 | 53 |
| Japan | 11 | 10 | 54 | 71 |
Using the GDP as a way of weighting medal counts does reflect at a high-level a country's ability to fund excellent training. Typically, though, GDP is not evenly allocated so we can, and do have, wealthy countries that relatively speaking underspend while some very poor countries redirect inappropriately large amounts of scarce resources to glamorous propaganda-rich events like the Olympics.
Using population also suffers from problems as a measure in that most world-class athletes train around the world. Many get scholarships and sponsorships and train in the best facilities with the best coaches wherever they may be. Being born poor does not mean anything at a certain point and at a certain level. At the highest levels, it becomes difficult to attribute where the resources used by a given athlete come from.
Another phenomenon that's been emerging for a while now is the effective buying of athletic excellence by offering citizenship and other benefits including money. This is well-funded fast-track stuff well beyond the easy immigration policies of the past.
The next 2 charts show ranking by population and by GDP. Zimbabwe would be a case in point regarding misappropriate use of funds. Their winning athlete apparently trains abroad all year.
| Country | RANK Unweighted Medal | RANK weighted medals | RANK Weighted medals per million POP | RANK weighted medals per billion GDP |
| Jamaica | 20 | 18 | 1 | 2 |
| Bahamas | 59 | 72 | 2 | 7 |
| Iceland | 81 | 80 | 3 | 23 |
| Bahrain | 74 | 61 | 4 | 24 |
| Norway | 22 | 21 | 5 | 36 |
| Australia | 5 | 5 | 6 | 27 |
| Slovenia | 40 | 40 | 7 | 17 |
| New Zealand | 24 | 26 | 8 | 20 |
| Estonia | 62 | 54 | 9 | 14 |
| Mongolia | 45 | 33 | 10 | 3 |
Adding a population component to the medal weighting formula seems legitimate but again if we look at poverty-stricken disease-burdened peoples, does it matter how many of them there are? Does it really contribute to their pool of top athletes?
| Country | RANK Unweighted Medal | RANK weighted medals | RANK Weighted medals per million POP | RANK weighted medals per billion GDP |
| Zimbabwe | 44 | 39 | 44 | 1 |
| Jamaica | 20 | 18 | 1 | 2 |
| Mongolia | 45 | 33 | 10 | 3 |
| Cuba | 12 | 14 | 13 | 4 |
| Georgia | 37 | 31 | 14 | 5 |
| Kenya | 18 | 17 | 42 | 6 |
| Bahamas | 59 | 72 | 2 | 7 |
| Armenia | 35 | 55 | 20 | 8 |
| Belarus | 13 | 16 | 12 | 9 |
| North Korea | 34 | 32 | 52 | 10 |
At the very least, the common reporting practice should become weighted medal rankings.
In the interest of demilitarizing the Games and lowering the jingoism potential, maybe the Olympics should start allowing “clubs” to compete where the clubs can have members from anywhere in the world. This would be similar to professional sports teams in that the club would have the best team they can afford and manage with the widest pool of talent possible – basically, the entire world. If they win, play club anthems and raise club flags.
On a practical note, instead of marching in nation by nation at the beginning, let's have teams / nations march in from all four stadium entrances at 60 second intervals. Over each minute, four teams enter. This has got to be the most tedious part of the opening ceremony.
Finally, people must really wonder about the cost of staging this type of spectacle. Did China really spend over $70 billion dollars?! We must pare it down dramatically. Fewer, more popular events. Perhaps 8 days instead of 16. We should think about capping spending. Revisit the idea of always holding the Olympics in Greece. Or, having a set of sites we rotate through. The games should inspire and uplift us not confuse and bankrupt us.
Olympic Bragging – Medals, Medal Counts & Other Observations, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.
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