Why does the USA distort the medal count to show themselves coming first?

Question

The rest of the world , including the official results, show the rankings by the most gold medals one, fair enough, first is first and is not second or third...

Yet the USA counts by overall amounts, and as such has been able to place themselves first on their version of the tally board most of the time...

what is it about the US psyche that prevents you from being able to credit the efforts of others and instead sees you twisting the figures to make yourselves look better...

Answer 1

USA ..... No.1???? Is there any other option??? They declare themselves World Champions when their teams win local competitions in sports that no-one else in the world plays! According to them they are naturally and by god given right in first place in everything in the entire history of the world. Why wouldn't they have a medal count that puts themselves in the no. 1 spot.

Reality and the USA have very little in common.

Answer 2

Um...they were still going by overall medals when China was leading. So I think you're making a moot point. It's the media coverage. If you don't care for the spin then I'm sure you can watch it from another point of view. But every time I've seen the medal count the number of golds (belonging to the chinese currently) has always been stressed, and heavily so.

Answer 3

Us Americans like to p**s the world off.

So, why not put us at first in the medal count. We Americans have a job, a reason to be placed on this earth. Our job is not complete until we p**s off Europe, Asia, etc.

There is your answer. There is my 10 points.

USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!

Answer 4

The media here is very pro-america, and in the games it is coming out as not only showing only the games america is partcipating in, but only showing the ones america is liely to dominate in.  

Partly because that gives them more ratings, since noone will watch a sport that they aren't particularly interested in normally (swimming, gymnastics, volleyball) unless they are at least winning.

Another part is that all the coverage is being done by NBC (GE), which is a big time war profiteer and it is in their best interest to give americans an inflated ego which plays well into their wars.

Answer 5

We need to be winners.....that's our nature

and the media does better business when we're first rather than second.......

pretty easy explaination

UPDATE:

instead of being logical with you.....

it seems like you're just "asking" that to bash

so I've taken down rational thought after my explaination

Answer 6

In your question, you even write the "medal count" and that's just what the media is doing, counting the medals.  Not just the gold!  

Also, there is nothing preventing most Americans from giving credit where credit is due, that is your opinion and I'm sorry you feel that way.  Please try not to generalize, as I think the Chinese gymnasts did an amazing job and I also think the Australian's are awesome in the pool!  I also think Blake is a really sore loser too :-)  And I think the media here needs to drop the girls gymnastics underage story all together, it's getting on my nerves since I really do think the Chinese girls were fantastic.

Answer 7

i was thinking the same!

china who is counted as 2nd place has way more gold medals than

USA. Like 10 more!!

but only reason USA is in 1st place is because they have like 20 bronze medals.

they should count it by gold medals cause the rest of the world does it and gold medal is worth more.

and its not like i hate USA or anything but

u know what i mean

right?/

Answer 8

It's just feel-good jingoistic propaganda. Is the medal count accurate though? If so, I don't see what the big deal is.

Answer 9

Neither is technically correct.  The International Olympic Committee does not officially endorse any system of medal counting.  According to the Olympic Charter, "The IOC and the OCOG (the local Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games) shall not draw up any global ranking per country."

The difference in counting systems originate from the early days of the Olympics, and the changes in the organization that sought to eliminate nations' victories over one another to one that celebrates them.

However, in recent years the IOC "unofficially" has endorsed the gold first counting system.  

If anything a system based on gold is more ego-centric, as this doesn't really recognize silver and bronze medals.  This is argued to have a negative impact on the sport, with countries obsessed with rankings cutting funding for sports where they do not have a high probability of winning gold medals. Alternatively, it could be argued that first place is the nature and important point of sports.If you look at the last olympic "results", regardless of total count or gold first, the US came first.  

Perhaps a more fair system is somewhere inbetween, where a table count is based on "points", eg. 5 points for a gold, 2 for silver and 1 for bronze.  This would at least accommodate both systems.

Answer 10

Yet another question designed to bait and upset Americans. Why doesn't everyone just stop bashing other countries, regardless of who they are? That's really not in the Olympic spirit. It really makes the people asking the questions look bitter or jealous anyway.