Very Close USA-China Olympic Medal Race (if you count points)

China is killing on gold medals. (pre-pubescent Chinese gymnasts tbd)
USA leading on total medals.

however, it's very close race if you count using points where:

• Gold = 3 points
• Silver = 2 points
• Bronze = 1 point

using this method, the results look like this:

Comments

[CJPhoto]

I think doing it by capita (ie. population) would be a far more useful metric. Ignore countries with only a couple of medal (big distortion) to find the country with the best sports people. Not just the country with the most people, or the ones with the most money to dump into sports.

Disclosure: I am a New Zealand and last time I saw one done, we were coming 3rd with a few gold from a population of only 4million. We haven't won any in the last few days so we would be slipping down the table I would have thought.

[Ryan]

I'm interested to see a medal count of countries where athletes train, live, or have citizenship. If they have dual citizenship, count one for each country. Ever track event seems to be prefaced with so and so athlete from name-a-non-US country trains at name-a-US-university.

[kghhf]

Just to show you a reality.. EU sportsmen are leading in this Game. EU Sportsmen have most medals in this games and EU Sportsmen have won this games.

now you can start to cry again..

[littleidea]

Who really thinks two silver medals are worth more than one gold?

How about use the relative market value of each metal as the basis?

In London, when China has even more medals, will we want the basketball gold count as one for every man on the roster...

[Dave Nielsen]

@CJPhoto ... Per capita doesn't work either 'cause there are caps on # of athletes a country can send in each sport. Therefore, countries like the US (pop. 300m) would get clobbered by small countries like the Bahamas (pop. 300k) who won only 2 medals.