How does one rank a country’s achievement in the Olympics? There has been a bit of controversy lately with inconsistency in how rankings are organized for the Olympic Medal Count for the 2008 Summer Olympics in China. Namely, should the countries be organized by total medals won, or by Gold medals won?
The official results on the web site for the 2008 Summer Olympics orders participant countries by Gold Medals, with a separate (unusable) column for “Rank by Total.” The most active news outlet in the United States, NBC, has their rankings ordered by total medals won.
Some are calling shenanigans on American Media Coverage ordering results by total medals won, claiming bias towards placing the United States in the number one position, despite being behind China in gold medals won. Others argue that the statistic is “Medal Count,” not “Gold Medal Count.”
Let’s consult a Tournologist: Which ordering makes the most sense: Total Medals or Gold Medals?
Here, we have what Tournologists refer to as a “grey area.” Common sense dictates that a Gold Medal should be worth more than a Silver or Bronze Medal. But, how much more? Are two Silvers worth a Gold? A similar argument can be found in Round Robin tournament scoring (such as the English Premier League, a full double Round Robin tournament): How much better is a Win than a Tie? Many tournaments assign a point value of 3 to a win, and 1 to a tie, so three ties would equal the value of a win. A similar weighting could be applied to the medal ranking. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assign the respective weights for Gold, Silver, and Bronze to be 3, 2, and 1. This gives us a nice middle ground between the extremes, making Silver and Bronze medals worth more than almost nothing (as a tiebreaker), and less than everything (as the same value as a Gold). How would the top countries rank?
| Country |
Weighted Gold |
Weighted Silver |
Weighted Bronze |
Weighted Total |
| China |
51 * 3 |
21 * 2 |
28 * 1 |
223 |
| United States |
36 * 3 |
38 * 2 |
36 * 1 |
220 |
| Russia |
23 * 3 |
21 * 2 |
28 * 1 |
139 |
| Great Britain |
19 * 3 |
13 * 2 |
15 * 1 |
98 |
| Australia |
14 * 3 |
15 * 2 |
17 * 1 |
89 |
When looking at these rankings, one must also wonder: Is this representative of the “most athletic” country? As Tournologists, we would argue that the ranking is also biased towards countries that specialized in sports that reward the most medals, namely: Athletics (47 medals) and Swimming (34 medals). Some of the most popular sports in the world are underrepresented in medal counts, most notably Football (Soccer, 2 medals). Of course, most of this is rooted in the history and origin of the Olympics, but it is worth noting.
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