Anyone see Dibaba blaze the field in the 10000metres?

look i'm english and i don't cast suspicious eyes over asians what a stupid thing to keep saying and it annoys me,massive generalising all the time and the media are mostly annoying idiots
there is plenty of unolympic spirit if you scratch under the surface as the olympics is professional sport of the highest order for these type of competitors its win at all costs i've seen sit ins,complainging to umpires,walk outs without shaking hands and so on,

you should see some of the lanes they give our athletes,wouldn't happen if i was in charge,we came out on the side of the chinese girl not against her

the footy ladies went out then and japan beat brasil,looks like a japan v usa final in the ladies

great athletics stadium and crowd,a very fast track they say so the big sprints should be good,good run from diababa i love her name,why has john inverdale turned up in the athletics chair,christ leave to the athletes and MJ

and to the aussies who does your swimming then didn't you want thorpe as a pundit and that bok dad is funny become a real star,unluck for adlington but 2 bronze on top of 2 gold is amazing for a brit in the pool,well done girl

@ 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).

yes she is ace

and its good to have both kinds of table to look at,

i just saw the chinese won gold for trampolining can't even spell it,dont critiicise cycling again

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).

Ask ANY  Athlethe in the Olympics what they want and they will tell you Gold, if that's not possible, silver, if that's not possible bronze. And that's what the table reflects.

No Atlethe wants the "Happy to be here medal" Proof

There's also been countless examples of people ditching their silvers or bronze because they feel they deserve a better one. Atlethes are VERY cometetive people and do not want to be fobbed off with patronising "aren't we all great?" pats on the back, they want all or nothing.

In any competition where there's a prize at stake, it encourages people to go all out and creates and enticing spectacles, if there's nothing at stake, no one will feel obligated to try their hardest.

Long story short, the tables/medals are there for a reason.

what does it look like if you give the medals a 3 2 1 weighting

That's just as bad as what the badminton teams did. They should receive the same treatment.

NOOO so close for a Gold in Triathlon for Sweden :(. Lost by like 0.01 seconds....