Neither silver nor bronze is as good as a gold at the Olympics

It’s time for my biannual Olympics complaint: The way that Olympics watchers compile medal counts is asinine. Look at this chart over at ESPN. They just total up the medals and rank the countries by whoever has the most, meaning that gold medals count the same as silver medals which count the same as bronze medals. This is, in a word, ridiculous. To have a true count, we need to weight gold more than silver, and weight silver more than bronze. The system I’d propose is simple: 3 points for a gold, 2 points for a silver, 1 for a bronze. Honestly, I think the weighting needs to be even heavier: 4/2/1 or 5/3/1.

But that’s just quibbling over the details. Look again at that chart: Switzerland, with its three gold medals, has had a better Olympics than Canada, who has one gold, two silvers, and one bronze. It just has. They don’t sing your national anthem for a silver, do they? Gold > Silver > Bronze. The medal tracking needs to reflect that fact.