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okr on 03 August 2012
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Ajescent said:
okr said:

@ Ajescent & Conegamer: I know that my way of counting is considered wrong, and this discussion is probably as old as the modern Olympic games, but imo treating all medal winners equally would do the often conjured Olympic Spirit (tm) much more justice than considering silver and bronze inferior medals.

Of course not handing out or not counting any medals at all would be the closest to the Olympic Spirit as possible, but who of us would then care anymore for the Olympic Games anyway. People need their heroes and after all the Games were meant as a competition already in ancient Greece (just between Greek cities not countries back then if I'm not mistaken).

You contradict yourself there. That there is proof why medal tables and their rightful alignment is needed.

I'm just trying to be honest. Competition is human nature and we all cheer for our countries and compare them to others with the help of this table. It's okay to hand out medals and count them in a table, but considering 1 gold medal more valuable than 1000 silver medals just doesn't feel right to me, no matter how often I'm told that it's the only correct way of counting.

If I were Japanese I wouldn't think "damn, currently we're just on place 13 in the medal table due to lack of gold medals" I´(like probably many Japanese sports fans do at the moment), I'ld think "21 medals already? Good job from our athletes".

The official medal count encourages the attitude of many people (including fans, media and even some officials) that only gold medals really count and that silver and bronze are just nice additions. It also puts even more pressure on the athletes (e.g. I bet quite a few British fans were disappointed when R. Adlington "only" made the Bronze medal this evening while I think they shouldn't).