How is the medal standings rank?

Question

is it based on the total number of gold medals or overall medals?

Answer 1

Conventionally it is based on total Gold medals but depending on your bias and what gives your country the higher rank some people use the total medal tally.

Answer 2

im american and i dont really care about numbers. it makes me happy to see that in a free country where athletes choose their own sports that we can  produce so many world class athletes.

Answer 3

The IOC ranks the countries according to Gold medals

Answer 4

There is no such thing as a "free country", it's always a mix between democracy and dictatorship.

Anyways there are different ways of ranking such as by total medals, gold medals, and many different point systems in which each medal gets a certain amount of points, such as 3-2-1, 4-2-1, 5-3-1, for gold, silver, and bronze respectively.

But in all those rankings China beats the U.S. except when total medal ranking is used, which is conveniently used in the U.S.  

Answer 5

definitely by total gold count ... but certain country based media will show it as total medal count .. keep on checking .. if they are lucky enuff to surpass the gold medal, chances is it will be reflected in the conventional way again  

Answer 6

Traditionally it is based on the number of gold medals but there has been some controversy in recent days with the US Media adopting a "number of total medals" methodology to support their claim to be number 1.

I say anyone who gets to the Olympics is a hero, anyone who makes a final is a legend and anyone who is skilled and fortunate enough to win any medal on the day should thank their lucky stars!

Who cares which country produced the most medal winners? Does anyone really still believe that the number of medals (gold or otherwise)  won at the Olympic games reflects the genetic superiority of the nation they came from?

The cold war is over and that type of inanity is not going to play anymore!

Answer 7

are you referring to US media?? haha guilty as charged!