The Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, part III -- Medals tables

With 103 medals, 35 gold, the United States ended the Athens 2004 games with firm control of the top spot. Number two in the tally was Russia with an impressive 92 medals, 27 gold, and number three was China with only 63 medals, 40 behind the United States.

Commentator Richard Adams of The Guardian, suggests that the accolades should go to China, then Russia, then Cuba, then Ethiopia, in that order. Why? Because as a ratio of gold to average income, those nations that have the lowest ratio win. In China, the average yearly income is under US$5000, so their $-to-Gold ratio is 145. In the US, the average yearly income is around US$35,000, thus making their $-to-Gold ratio about 1031. The UK falls to 26th in this ranking at 2953, with Belarus, Italy, France and Thailand immediately preceding it.

Adams is correct to point out that it is quite silly to compare medals won on the basis of population alone. The reason being that China, with nearly 1/4 of the world's population, is simply incomparable to small countries like Jamaica. Given the population of Jamaica, winning one gold medal would put them ahead of China, no matter how many gold medals China ended up winning (i.e. there just aren't enough gold medals to be won to overcome the ratio).

But, I can't help but think that this system is fundamentally flawed as well. The United States is one of the only countries where athletes get no government funds to train. The US Olympic Committee, is funded solely by donations and corporate sponsorship. That is the reason why seemingly every product group in the US has an official Olympic sponsor. Why the USOC needs an official beer, other than for the money, I don't know. Compare this with the system that was in the USSR. The Soviet governments poured vast amounts of money into their Olympic teams. The results were impressive. The Soviets ended atop the medals tally more often than you would think. To be sure, the GDP of the Soviet Union was always small than the United States, so according to Adams, the USSR should have ended up higher than the US in the rankings. But clearly their impressive results were not a result of the average incomes of the Soviet people, so Adams' rankings seem to have lost their appeal. Generally speaking though, most governments pay their athletes to train. So, per capita income is still a poor way of ranking medals because it doesn't take into account that governments may pay out a disproportionate amount of money to their athletes for whatever reasons.

It should also be noted that a number of world class African, European and Asian athletes train in the United States and only return home periodically to represent their team in world competitions. Female European swimmers train at a number of US universities. So, the gold medal won by a country's athlete come have come because of the training in a foreign country. And, isn't the whole point to talking about medals in economic terms a way of saying how much a country can afford to train its athletes? Well, what if the country doesn't train its athletes?

So, there are a number of obvious problems with looking at the medals totals and they all have to do with context. A number like 103 medals means very little unless it is placed in the appropriate context. Population does matter. Smaller countries don't have the number of talented athletes to field contenders in all 200+ Olympic competitions. Perhaps it would be worth a look into the ratio of competitors per country entered in a competition to the number that actually win medals. It might be more meaningful to understand that of the 50 competitions that Romania entered, 8 of them ended with Romania winning the gold medal. The opposite impression would be given if Romania had entered 250 events and only scraped out 8 gold medals. We also need to pay attention to the amount of money a government (or society) spends on their athletes. Measuring that as aspect of average income would not take into account an especially sports-crazed (where governments/citizens choose to spend a lot on their athletes) or sports-averse (where governments/citizens choose not to spend a lot on their athletes) country.

Or, maybe it would just be easier to know that the US kicks, and always will kick, Olympic ass, and be done with it.