For all of the work and effort of most team sports including basketball and water polo they award one to few medals to winning teams. Meanwhile, sports like gymnastics and swimming award medals for each category of movement. In the latter, one athlete can earn many medals all for themselves. This causes much greater weighting in certain sports above others in terms of total medal count and also takes away from the team aspect of the entire competition. It would be fairer if in all sports especially gymnastics and swimming the scores were tallied after many events and one medal was awarded to each member of the team. They are a team after all. This would also make the entire Olympic competition more interesting and competitive on a national level. I feel nobody really cares who wins the entire event because of this imbalance.

  • Gazmeister_WongatronB
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    2 months ago

    In defence of gymnastics, even though the four women’s disciplines and 6 men’s disciplines all fall under the umbrella of “artistic gymnasts” each event is very different. There’s as much difference between doing a beam routine and an uneven bars set as there is between running the 100m dash and doing the pole vault in athletics.

    If you’re going to go after gymnastics, you may as well consider reducing the number of track and field events too.