Why does the Canadian CBC list China as the leader of the medal standings, but the American NBC lists the USA?

Question

The CBC lists China as the leader of the medal standings because China won the most gold medals:

http://cbc.stats.com/olympics_medals.asp?sort=gold

But, NBC lists USA as the leader of the medal standings because USA won the most total medals:

http://www.nbcolympics.com/medals/index.html

Which one is correct? Which country (China or USA) is the true leader of the medals?

Answer 1

I think you probably know the answer to that...

If that gives American pride for their own country and encourage younger people to take part in sports, then I don't see any reason why not...

Answer 2

They are both correct. The way China scores is by gold medals won - the way the U.S. scores is by total number of medals won.

Answer 3

NBC does acknowledge that the chinese have more gold, but the US did get more medals overall.

Answer 4

take either one you want. it has always been done like this, all countries are ranked by total medals.

past american media olympic tables

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...

Answer 5

In China, and many other countries they only recognize the number of Gold Medals as their total.  The United States counts both the Silver and Bronze in their medal totals.

Answer 6

I would say China would be the leader, because they had more gold metals then we had more total metals.

Answer 7

It's as simple as this America doesn't like to be beaten,so they list it that way.

Answer 8

china are the leaders they have more gold but america have more medals overall about 10 or 15 more but it goes on how many gold you have

Answer 9

Every country in the past used to count medals by Gold, only for this Olympics USA decided to count by Total Medal Count.

This link shows USA counting by Gold for the 2004 Athens Olympic games - http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/... did you notice China ranking over Russia? Even though Russia leads by total medals.

This link shows the change from Gold to Total - http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/... Notice now USA leads even thought China leads the Gold count.

Answer 10

normally listing it by most gold medals is correct, the majority of countries list it in order of gold medals and the US did it 4 years ago in Athens however this time around they were being beaten in gold by China so they changed it because they dont like to look like losers.