Sunday, February 20, 2022

Winter Olympics medals tables - take your pick

I've pointed out before the inconsistency in how Olympic medals tables are shown.

The same applies with the Winter Olympics just finished. The Canadian media (and, funnily enough, many American news outlets) tends to use a metric of total medals won, which shows Canada (which has a tendency to win lots of bronze medals) in the best possible light. European media usually lists countries by golds won (as does the official Olympics.com website), in which Canada shows quite poorly, but the USA Netherlands, etc, come out rather well. 

Neither method is definitive, and I have always argued that the different medals would be weighted, say three points for a gold, two for a silver, and one for a bronze (or I have also seen 4, 2 and 1, or 6, 3 and 2, used).

In the 2022 Winter Olympics, Canada places a creditable fourth in total medals after Norway, ROC (not Russia, honest) and Germany (and above the USA!). In golds, though, we only show as 11th, after Norway,  Germany, China, and all sorts of other countries (including the USA!). 

My own calculation of a weighted list (using 3 for gold, 2 for silver and 1 for bronze) ends with Canada in 5th place after Norway, Germany, ROC and USA (suggesting, to me anyway, that the total medals metric is probably a better indication of overall performance than golds).

Of course, for Norway, it really doesn't matter!

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