How does the medal count work?

Question

i have seen it both ways with usa on top because of most medals but then there are other ways where china is on top with most golds?

Answer 1

I think this question has been asked and answered too many times.

It's not rocket science.  The medal count works whichever way the counter wants it to work.  They can rank it by gold medals or by total medals or even by bronze medals if they want to (or if you're Aussie by medals per capita).

However, common sense dictates that a gold medal is most important (because it means you won!), and hence most people rank countries by the number of gold medals first, and then silver, then bronze.  Just think about it.  If the US won 40 silvers and China won 39 golds, would you say the US has done better than China?

At these Olympics, to make it look like they are on top of the world as usual, the US have ranked countries by the number of total medals.  They can do what they want.  Whatever makes them happy.  And it has worked.  A lot of Americans honestly believe they are at the top at these Olympics.  But the rest of the world knows better (or at least I thought so until I saw so many people asking the same question).

Answer 2

Countries are ranked based on the most number of golds. If two countries are tied for number of golds, the tiebreaker would be the silver medal count and so on.

And to quote wikipedia: "The ranking sorts by the number of gold medals the athletes from a country have earned (in this context, a "country" is an entity represented by a National Olympic Committee). The number of silver medals is taken into consideration next and then the number of bronze medals. If countries are still tied, equal ranking is given and they are listed alphabetically by IOC country code."

Answer 3

Depends on where you live

In the US, it always was done by the number of medals, even when the US did not win a lot of medals

I guess other places does by the gold

I think all medals should count

Forget the US and China

How about France: they have 34 medals, have five gold medals.  The US way, France is number 7th

If you did it by gold, would be 12th after the Neverlands with 15

Neverlands with 15 medals would go from 14th to 10th with only 15 medals

They will jump ahead of France with more than double medals for one more gold

To me the total number of medals make it easy to understand, but I guess it's what you are use to

Answer 4

u count up all of the medals (gold sliver bronze) and whoever has the most medals is on topj!!

Answer 5

It does not really work. It only works  for the individual and the sport. There are too many circumstances to make a fair comparison. There are 100M , 200M, team relays etc but 1 basketball game. Why no "one on one", "two on two", half court and horse?  How many medals might Jordan have then? Why not under 6ft basketball like they do with feather weight boxing?I think Phelps was a great swimmer but a high medal count is a function of the events available to him. It does help prove Phelps did not just have a good day and is not a fluke this is true. Also, a top notch team sport like soccer/football or basketball is much more valuable than say disk throw since it takes many talented dedicated athletes to win for a game a lot of people care about. However it is the Olympic "games" and it is fun to watch.

   If one is to count, naturally gold matters more than other medals but to say silver and bronze don't count for something is insulting to the athletes who are world class worthy competitors who are better than any of us. If someone won 5 silvers in (really)different events like a Jim Thorp, I would say they are a better athlete  than anyone with one gold or even two for that matter. If someone won silver in a 200M hurdle and then  won a silver in beach volley ball, team basket ball and then came up just short in diving  and archery who would be the best athlete?  Such an individual would be considered  phenomenal.  Why is a county different?   So I would say a country with a significant amount of other than gold medals has evidence of successful sports programs and talented athletes. However edging another country out in total medals while having far fewer golds would certainly point towards the one with far more golds. Again, thats if such comparisons could be made and as I said one snow board medal does not equal team hockey I don't care who says it does..  

Answer 6

It works like a pyramid, the amount of gold are most important, followed by the amount of silver, then bronze. If a country is tied with another country in gold, then whoever has the most silver, or if they have the same amount of silver, then whoever has the most bronze. China is far ahead in medals, as it has many many more gold than the United States.

Answer 7

it doesnt matter about total...

its all about golds...

Answer 8

depends on where you are. the us has always used the total medal table.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/torino2...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/olymp...

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/...

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/winter02/i...

http://espn.go.com/oly/summer00/standing...

even on events http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/athens2...