Which country should be No. 1 on the medal table?

In a post titled "Only in America," Angry African writes about the Olympic medal table and how the U.S. is No. 1 in tables that appear in the American media (See Yahoo! Sports table), while China is No. 1 in tables that appear elsewhere (See BBC table).

You know what system they use in the rest of the world for the official Olympic ranking system? The country with the most gold medals is on top and the little country with the least is right down there at the bottom. Makes sense. Right? Oh? Not here though. Over here they have America on top. They are way behind the Chinese when it comes to gold medals but that doesn’t matter. They argue that they have more of the other medals so they should be on top. [Link]

So which of the two tables is more accurate? Both of them have flaws, in my opinion. That's why I've developed a medal table that removes any bias and truly shows which country is No. 1 at the Olympics.

 

As you can see, this table is superior to any others out there. It has already been endorsed by major sporting bodies such as the IOC (Indian Organization of Croquet) and FIFA (Federation of Indian Fencers in Assam).

Comments

[Angry African]

What about South Africa? We have one silver medal. And although we flunk the mustaches part we do catch up on the "no money spent on Olympics" and "team with the lowest average number of legs" (Natalie Du Toit is the first amputee to participate in the Olympics "proper". It should at least get us past the Poms and Yanks. I'll live behind the Chinese as long as they promise to unblock my blog. And maybe the Russians, if they promise to bribe me.

[Ramadas]

Jokes apart, the correct way of calculating points should be by giving weightages to the medals. For example give a weightage of 1 for every bronze medal, 2 for every silver and 4 for every gold, multiply and add up the products for each country. A country which got only 1 gold medal would be equal to a country which has got only 4 bronze medals, and no other medals and so on.

[Melvin]

Angry African, Natalie Du Toit is amazing. She deserved a lot more attention than she got. What a great athlete.

Ramadas, I agree with you, though I'd give three points for a gold, 2 for silver and 1 for bronze. That would put China at No. 1, with the U.S. close behind.