During and after the Olympics you always see the Medal Table, who’s got more golds who’s got more total. But neither one of those really tell you the whole picture. We need a scoring system, and the summer swim league I grew up in (Northern Virginia Swimming League) has a great one:
- Gold = 5 points
- Silver = 3 points
- Bronze = 1 point
With that system the US still won, but France moves from 5th up to 3rd. It’s a much more straightforward evaluation of Olympic performance than debating gold vs. total.
In swimming, the US broadcast made it seem like the US and Australia were close, with the battle for the most golds coming down to the last race. But the score shows a different picture, one where the US smashed the Australians during the course of the week-long meet
Here’s a link to the full medal table with the scoring in place https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_yjOUp3VHvRMhI7DmIvUHq436L1MFbuHe-eu8m5G64Y/edit?usp=sharing
Strange weighting. This says that you’d give up 3 bronzes for a silver, but you wouldn’t swap two silvers for a gold.
I’m fairly sure that almost every single athlete alive would trade two silvers for a gold. Two silvers and a bronze for gold is more 50/50 thus why I like the 2x+1 weighting.
But it really doesn’t change the ordering much though. The top 10 ordered four different ways, by gold, 3x, 2x + 1, and total.
https://preview.redd.it/smjz7l5k8iid1.png?width=2081&format=png&auto=webp&s=1b93e9033a58aebbc364e4d9716474e6540596d5
Moving from gold to total ordering
Japan is one of the biggest losers which is a shame as their gold performances were excellent, even if they did push us into 4th in the final days.
Great Britain is one of the biggest winners with a large number of bronze medals.