Changing China
Giant on the move
China assured of first place in medals table
There’s been a lively discussion, here and elsewhere, about which version of the medals table is a better way of ranking countries’ achievements at the Olympics.
Reuters goes with the “gold standard”, if you like, which has put China out in front almost from the start. Other, mainly American outlets go with the “total number of medals” tally that puts the U.S. on top.
It’s been interesting to hear so many different points of view, and suggestions for different, weighted systems of formatting the table (see the original piece here).
A lot of people like the idea of different points for gold, silver and bronze, while I’ve enjoyed the notion of combining that weighting system with a per capita bias. That was suggested to me by Greg Stutchbury, a colleague from New Zealand, and it worked out that top of the medals table would be New Zealand. Strange, that.
Who’s top of the medals table?
Americans looking at the medals table to the right of this blog, or on the official Games website, might be surprised to see the host country topping the chart with 39 gold medals and 68 in total.
The New York Times website, meanwhile, has the United States on top with a chart-leading 73 medals in total, 23 of them gold.
