I am new here and I haven’t seen this posted in many places, but I think medals should be counted based on the number of actual medals given out (giving more weight to team sports)

There are many discussions on how swimming/track/gymnastics skew the medal count by a lot. I think this can be solved easily by counting a gold medal in basketball as 12 gold medals (one for each member of the team). I am biased for sure, being from Serbia, but we have only 5 medals these olympics, and almost 30 olympians who came back with medals. This seems ridiculous to me.

This should also apply to team events such as relays, doubles, etc.

And before anyone says - it’s one medal per team, then every other sport (swimming/track) should have 1 (best) competitor per country, and not have the chance to win multiple medals for the same event, unless it’s a team event. This is why, due to the difference in governing bodies between sports, the medal count per medals handed out would be easiest.

I am sure this would not be accepted by countries whose medals skew heavily on individual sports, but I think it’s a fairer system than what we have right now.

  • fansteuuuOPBEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    To be clear I completely agree with this. I only want to watch the best of the best, but a lot of the times the IOC wants to see representation from all continents.

    For example, in basketball, there are only 12 teams competing (should be at least 16 but that’s a different discussion). And they are not the best 12 teams in the world. If it were the best 12 teams, there would be only Australia, US, Canada, and 9 European teams, with an occasional Argentina/Brazil sighting every once in a while.