Is there too much emphasis placed on "medal tables " by country ?

Question

The olympic ideal is about competing and striving to do your best, you could win a medal as a 16 yr.old Kenyan, then emigrate to U.S. and live the rest of your life there. It's still YOUR medal not Kenya's or America's !

Answer 1

I completely agree with you. People who are arguing here about the medal table and who is leading are incapable of competing in the Olympic and trying to claim credit on other peoples medals.

Answer 2

Yes.

Even the IOC themselves don't keep an official cumulative tally as to how many medals each country has won.

I reckon you could award 10 points for a gold, 5 for a silver, 3 for a bronze, and 1 point for a finalist in each event, and total up things that way.

Working out the number of medals won based on the size of the population of the country concerned would change the order of things, too. There are (officially) 65 Chinese for every Australian, but China doesn't have 65 times as many medals as the Aussies!