The Olympics

[sunrise089]

@Ruff - I really dislike "Gold->Silver->Bronze" rankings. Of course a country with 99 golds > country with 100 silvers, but what I feel is much more common with your ranking system is for mid-tier countries to be sorted like 9gold+5silver+6bronze > 8gold+15silver+20bronze, which I find much more objectionable.

[Bobchillingworth]

Jesus bloody Christ NBC we get it, that South African dude was a double goddamn amputee. Now please stop talking about him like he is/was some sort of inspirational circus freak. "HOW CAN ONE MAN COMPETE WITH SUCH A CRIPPLING DISABILITY?" Idk, probably by not obsessing over it like it's his sole defining feature.




Also, congrats to Brazil for your massively super-powerful gymnast guy, whose shoulders are larger than my torso. For some reason I feel like we may be seeing a lot of him in four years

[Square Leg]

I was lucky enough to go to Eton Dorney to watch the Canoe Sprint events yesterday morning. My wife and I are actually quite good friends with one of the competitors and his wife and we were last minute invited to go with the family along with their sponsors to watch. It was a really good atmosphere and the emphasis on getting the kids involved was just overwhelming. The slogan of the games is "Inspire a Generation" and it came accross. The security was strict but not invasive and the staff at the site were so happy, joking along with the crowd as we left. I was quite proud to be British, which I'm not always!

I can't vouch for any of the other sites but the people we spoke to who had been elsewhere were all very positive - some did say that the security was a bit much in some places though.

Just thought I'd share my experience with RB!

[Krill]

@Ruff - I really dislike "Gold->Silver->Bronze" rankings. Of course a country with 99 golds > country with 100 silvers, but what I feel is much more common with your ranking system is for mid-tier countries to be sorted like 9gold+5silver+6bronze > 8gold+15silver+20bronze, which I find much more objectionable.

That is totally arbitrary. What makes third better than fourth and worthy of a metal? That is why rankings are based of gold and nothing else.


I'm just amazed more Brits haven't choked.

[Speaker]

That is totally arbitrary. What makes third better than fourth and worthy of a metal?

Isn't third, by definition, better than fourth?

This is why rankings are based of gold and nothing else.

http://espn.go.com/olympics/summer/2012/medals
The default rankings on ESPN are by medal total, not just gold.

[scooter]

Doesn't make a huge deal of difference to me. A logical compromise would be a points system where gold == 3, silver == 2, and bronze == 1. I'm definitely more impressed by a country with 6G, 8S, 5B than a country with 7G, 2S, 1B or something like that.

[Selrahc]

http://espn.go.com/olympics/summer/2012/medals
The default rankings on ESPN are by medal total, not just gold.

The initial complaint by Ruff was that the USA give medal rankings based on totals, rather than golds. As opposed to most other countries news sources in his experience.

Doing a medal just by total is a little crazy. Gold *is* a lot better than Silver or Bronze. It's what everyone is going for. Counting them all arbitrarily equal for judging which country is performing best seems like it misses the point a bit. Even just a simple weighted table where Gold counts double Silver counts double Bronze would be a lot closer to "fair", if you want to give scoreboard credit to the lesser medals.

[Bobchillingworth]

Gold *is* a lot better than Silver or Bronze. It's what everyone is going for.

I disagree with this. For nations like the United States or China, sure. They regularly win enormous quantities of medals, and it only makes sense for them to value Gold over anything else. But a lot of the countries competing haven't won any medals before, or are lucky to take away even a couple from any given Game. In those cases, I think just finishing within the top three for any event is the main objective.

[Ruff_Hi]

I posted a subject like this on FB and my brother posted this ...

Plagiarised from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_medal_table

In 1908, the British press invented a ranking system based on awarding gold medals 5 points, silver medals 3 points, and bronze medals 1 point (5:3:1).[13]

In 2004, a linear system awarding 3 points to gold, 2 points to silver and 1 point to bronze (3:2:1) was used by the Australian Geography Teachers Association.[16] This weighting is part of the Fibonacci sequence which values a gold medal as much weight as a silver and a bronze medal combined.

In response to the 2008 controversy over medal rank, a New York Times article on the subject described an exponential points system, with 4 points awarded for every gold medal, 2 points for every silver medal, and 1 point for every bronze medal (4:2:1).[17]

If you look on the official Olympic site - they don't have a medal tally (that I could find) but you do find one (sorted by gold) on http://www.london2012.com.

[scooter]

I vote we (in the US) use whichever one of those three which makes us look the best against China.