Seeing that Wikipedia is in the news lately, I thought I would link to their medal count webpage. It looks like the US is currently in the lead with 22 medals in total, though China has 13 Golds to our 7.
I always watch the Winter Olympics and don’t care much for the Summer Olympics (seriously, badminton is an Olympic sport?) but it is always good to see the US do well in international sporting events as we suck in the true international sport, football (soccer).
- VWI
August 23, 2008 at 1:04 am |
So the medal count is becoming the target of some discussion. Most countries rank by gold medals, while the US ranks by total medals (this is not new this year). This of course determines whether the US or China is in the lead. It seems reasonable that golds should be counted more, but it seems all medals should be counted. I would propose that gold be valued 1.5, silver 1, and bronze .5 (thus adding up to three medal points awarded for each event but being weighted towards gold). By this method, the last time I checked the medal count, the US and China were tied at 100 medals each.
Now, one can certainly argue that gold should be disproportionately weighted which would put China ahead, but it seems the only fair method would incorporate some weighting system.