As evident, the typical media ranking does not differentiate by type of medal as they count gold silver and bronze medals equally. Why would anyone count a gold medal in the same way as a silver or bronze medal? Obviously, that type of accounting is overly simplified. So, let’s look at some other accounting systems.
Ranking by Metal Value
As most people are aware, the actual value of any object of equal size varies substantially with its metal content. In simple terms, solely based on the (theoretical) type of material used, if a medal is made from pure gold it would be worth (in arbitrary units) 1,000, while one made of silver would be 25, and one made of bronze about 2 value units.
By that type of accounting (i.e. the theoretical metal value), the number of gold medals would far outweigh any other consideration. Consequently, the ranking of the first three countries would then be Russia, Norway, Canada, then followed by the USA, Netherlands and Germany.
Even the governments and their tax authorities know better than to count all medals as equal. For example, many countries either award direct payments to their top (medalist) athletes or use other means to convey direct or indirect benefits of one sort or another.
Awards by Governments
To make up for the nonexistent (hence only theoretical metal value) of the actual medals, various countries provide for awards, rewards and/or other benefits to their top athletes who are bringing home some “medal-metal.”
USA
For the Sochi competitions, the U.S. Olympic Committee offers all (US) medalists a cash prize for each medal they bring home for the country. For these Sochi Olympics, their gold, silver, and bronze medalists will receive direct payments of $25,000, $15,000, and $10,000, respectively. Individual sports associations may offer additional prizes on top of this. So, winning a gold medal can earn an athlete much more than the cash equivalent of the precious metal itself, from direct and indirect forms of government support alone.
Other Countries
Some countries are quite openly announcing their rewards for gold medalists. For example, Azerbaijan is boasting a reward of $510,000! So far, they haven’t had to pay out yet and may never have to, but that’s beside the point. The Radio Free Europe website has a graph with the relative amounts of benefits for the gold medalists by country. Among the six countries in Table 1, only three are listed with payments as follows: Russia at the top for gold medals at $113,000, followed by the US at $25,000 and Canada at $10,000. Neither the Netherlands nor Germany is listed at this site.
Other countries are rather shy about openly proclaiming such benefits for their athletes. Of course, there are many ways to provide rewards and benefits by way of support for training, travel, unaccounted grants, time off normal (working) duties, tax allowances and so forth; the list is almost endless and the details by and large unavailable to outsiders.
Given all these different kinds of supports and benefits either before or after the competitions, it is clear that the old Olympic standard of “amateurism” of athletes has been abandoned long ago. That was the time when athletes were disqualified for their lack of “amateurism” like the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon champion Jim Thorpe. Thorpe was stripped of his medals when it was discovered that he had played semi-professional baseball before the Olympics.
Alternate Ranking
Obviously, that amateur standard has long fallen by the way side. Therefore, it may also be time to move the country ranking system into the 21st century and my proposal is straightforward and easy to calculate.
The ranking system proposed here uses numeric “values” (multipliers) of 3 for gold, 2 for silver and 1 for bronze medals. On that basis, the ranking of the six countries as shown in Table 1 would change to that given in Table 2:
(*) Equal ranking by total “medal value”
Clearly, by attaching simple values to the three kinds of Olympic medals, the country ranking changes substantially. Russia is still in lead with Canada in second place and the other four countries following. In my mind this type of ranking has certainly more justification than a simple medal count without differentiation.
However, there is yet another way to establish the ranking of countries, namely by the actual number of medals handed out to all Olympians from each country. That type of count then also considers team sports differently from competitions by individuals.
Team Sports
Team sports involve anywhere from 2 to 20 athletes in a team. Of course, the Olympic Committee has always recognized that and awarded not just one medal to the team leader but a medal to each team member and rightly so. However, in terms of medal counts, the media look at teams as “one” medalist only.
For example, each of Canada’s men’s and women’s hockey team members received a gold medal. In total, the hockey count alone comes to 40 gold medals for Canada and would easily propel Canada into the top spot for “value adjusted” medals!
Now, that’s the kind of counting I like most.
