Hi everyone!
I’m a huge nerd for the olympic games, trying to watch as much as possible every time.
However, I’m always bothered by the medals table since it is completely arbitrary in my opinion. Many (team) sports offer a maximum of two medals (while requiring the full two weeks), while some other sports offer dozens within a few days. This always skews the medals table unfairly towards the nations that are strong in those sports that offer many medals specifically, while putting nations that are strong in team sports at a disadvantage.
So for every olympic games I make my own medals table where I divide the value of a medal by the number of events a sport offers.
I figured that, while it’s just a bit of fun for me, it might also be interesting for some here.
Mind you, I do not argue that “my way is better”. It’s just a different way to look at it.
The formula I specifically used for the score is:
[x being the number of events in one sport]
For a gold medal: (1/x)*100*4
For a silver medal: (1/x)*100*2
For a bronze medal: (1/x)*100
[This values a gold medal as twice as valuable as a silver, and a silver as twice as valuable as a bronze]
As an example: One silver medal in Handball is worth 100 points (1/2*100*2), and one gold medal in sailing 40 (1/10*100*4).
This means there’s 700 points total being given out for each sport equally (400 for all gold, 200 for all silver, and 100 for all bronze medals)
All those scores for each medal combined gives the final score, which results in this list:
(I also have a huge spreadsheet if there’s any interest in the details)
Precisely. In a nutshell, China was stronger in a wider variety of sports.