So what means more? China has only 83 medals, but the USA has 100, yet China are listed as being in 1st Place?

Question

Mintz - good link!

Answer 1

What about in alphabetical order.

Answer 2

What would you rather win a gold or a silver.

Answer 3

Because gold is the winner,  Duh.  

Answer 4

Gold is the only color that counts when it comes to placings, I don't know why, thats just how its always been

Answer 5

China is top as they do placings based on the gold medals a country has earned.

edit: if you look at the table link you gave, down the very right hand side, there is a "rank by total" column, and in this it shows china as second and usa as first ( this is for overall number of medals)

Answer 6

IOC ranks according to GOLD. China has nearly twice as many Olympic champions than the USA.

USA doesn't normally mind the ranking system, but your ridiculous propaganda machine wants to put a spin on it, trying to make second best look like the best.

Answer 7

China won most events,Silver and Bronze don't really matter.Everyone knew beforehand how the scoring is done.Whoever gets the most Golds wins,always has done and always will do.Every country in the World knows that China are winning except USA,come on,we can't all be wrong.

Answer 8

Gold medal means winning the game. Silver medal 1st runner-up and bronze medal 2nd runner-up. More gold make it the winner. So if USA only get bronze medal total of 100 and China only get gold medal total of 50, China will be the 1st place bcoz they win more games.

Answer 9

Gold first is the only sensible way to do it.

Hey Mr Phelps would you mind swapping your 9 gold medals for 10 bronze ones? I know it would mean that you were actually a loser and third rate, but it would put you higher up the Yahoo/NBC list.

The USA media is being totally ridiculed about the way they present the medal table

Check this out http://www.smh.com.au/news/off-the-field...

A lot of people have said other countries do it by total medal count. They do not and have never done so. See the BBC link from 2000 below. A lot of people have said the the US media have always done it this way. That's only half true. Some have and some haven't.

Why do most of the US media do it this way? I don't know, but there is no logic to it and no-one else in the world does it this way. Certainly not the IOC. They are the governing body. It's not up to anyone else to determine what medals mean. The system used by the US media means that 15 Bronze medals are worth more than than 10 Gold and 4 Silver which is clearly nonsense. A gold is clearly worth more than a bronze.

You could perhaps award a number of points for each type of medal, but how many points G=5,S=3, B=1 or G=3,S=2, B=1? Such a system could be weighted in so many different ways that there could never be any agreement. That's why no-one does it this way. There may be a precedent for this though if you look at the New York Times article from 1912 it says that the USA won the Olympics with the most points. However AFAIK this seems to be an invention of the New York Times or some other body not associated with the IOC.

The IOC do not award points per medal and they do not award an overall prize for "winning the Olympics" - this is an invention of the media.

Without any agreement about a gold been worth 3 bronzes or whatever the only sensible way to rank it is the way the IOC and the rest of the world do it. In this scheme a gold is worth an infinite number of silvers and bronzes. I would have thought that this would equate with the US sporting mentality where winning is everything and coming second is nothing. I'm not belittling silver and bronze medals, The thing about winning is everything is an American invention - see the Wikipedia link.

Answer 10

They tally the list of countrys over who has won the most Gold medals, nothing else

Answer 11

only sour grapes can not recognize the paramount importance of counting gold medals only for ranking purpose.

Answer 12

Simple. "2nd is failing. Not good enough.

Answer 13

It is a golden opportunity and also a golden age to hold an Olympics therefore gold is the one that is importance.

Gold is number 1 ----China

More is number 2 --- USA (can be catch-up by China before Sunday)

Watch out & it is natural.

Answer 14

The medals are gold plated silver not solid gold so .......er.....are they gold or silver ?

Answer 15

China is in the 1st place, because she has more gold medals than USA.