The Destroyer of Finance

 I am an Olympic freak.  For 1444 days every four years, I will not even think about a wide range of sports, and yet for 17 days I’ll follow (or try) every minute of tons of obscure competitions.  This doesn’t count my companion obsession with the winter games as well that led to being the treasurer of a curling club in Texas.

 So now the summer games are over and the question becomes, “Who won?”  Well, China had the most gold medals with 51.  Does that mean China won?  The US countered by winning the most medals overall, which ought to count for something.  So did the US win?

 From an athlete’s perspective, getting a gold medal is the pinnacle of acheivement (for most sports, at least).  However, most athletes would also be estatic to win a silver or a bronze.  I like to gauge the medal count by a somewhat common points system: Gold is the pinnacle and gets 10 points, Silver is great and gets 6 points, and bronze is superb and gets 4 points.  If you were a competitor, would you rather have 1 gold or 3 bronze medals?  It’d be a close call, I’d think… or if you’d rather, would you rather have 1 gold and three bronze or 2 gold (thus eliminating the competitive desire to be best at at least one thing)?  This point system usually carries down through 6th place, but since that data isn’t really collected at the olympics (or even determined at all in some cases), we have to discard points 3,2,and 1.

 In the end, I declare China the winner of the 2008 games with 748 points over the USA’s 732 points.

 The rest of the top 10:

 Russia with 468

 Britain with 328

 Australia with 298

 Germany with 280

 France with 234

 South Korea with 222

 Italy with 180

 and Japan with 166.

 For the most part it follows the raw medal count except where Japan passes by Ukraine (and China passing the US of course).  UN Security Council represent!

 In 2012 look for China to maybe pull back a little in the medal count based on the fact that many of China’s medals came from judged events and a home crowd DOES impact the judging.  I’m not implying that the judges don’t try to do their unbiased best, I’m just saying it’s next to impossible to have a human subjective opinion influenced to some degree by the reaction of a crowd.

 Regardless, 2012 will likely be the last time there is any debate about the medal count winner as in 2016 and beyond China’s population and government backed programs will certainly overwhelm the US.  I saw a good suggestion that instead of donating $3 of your taxes to the damn presidential campaign fund, we should have the option to donate it to the Olympic program.  Probably be a much more popular option.