Credit where credit is due

Videos
Photos

By Dylan Quinnell (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-08-23 14:56

A medal tally by Washingtonpost.com

A medal tally by China's Xinhua News Agency

Now that the Games are nearly over, the question is who is on top? When I checked NBC I found USA securely on top with 103 medals, with China a few medals behind on 89. No, wait a minute I just heard that a report on New Zealand radio put Australia firmly on top with New Zealand a distant second. Hang on, what about this China Daily report that shows China untouchable in the number one spot with 47 golds, while the US trail behind on only 31?

The gold medal for the Games of the 29th Olympiad. [Agencies]

The saga of how to read the medal tally has been one of the more amusing issues to come out of the Olympics. If you look at any international media, apart from most of the American media, they used the accepted system of ranking teams according to the number of golds they have won.

However, when I was watching CNN one day I got really confused when suddenly America was on top, until I realised that they were going on the total number of medals irrespective of their colour. I had to laugh. If believing they are first motivates the American athletes then I guess they can do what they want, who cares what the world thinks.

Let me just caution you that the American people as not as stupid as some of their press would lead you to believe. I have had a lot of Americans roll their eyes as they tell me how stupid their press are to think anybody is fooled by their home-grown medal tally.

Then the Australians decided to get in on the act. The presenter of an Australian breakfast show, Mark Berretta, came up with a medal tally ranked by the total number of medals won per head of capita. As Australia has a small population, compared to most countries, of about 20 million but has also won a lot of medals, this put them firmly in number one. Think of our joy in New Zealand when that same system saw New Zealand in second, due to our tiny population of only 4 million.

This was all meant as a joke but most of the world misunderstood our isolated and sarcastic South-Pacific-sense-of-humour and next minute Chinese news reports were also ridiculing the Australian system.

To give credit where credit is due China has had an amazing Olympics. Their athletes have won almost all of the diving medals as well as most of the gymnastics and weightlifting. They have even won medals in swimming, not a traditionally strong area. For the American media to think that they are fooling anyone by putting the United States at the top is ludicrous. The US has also had a good Olympics but as it stands at the moment they have been outclassed. Closing a 14 gold medal deficit on the second to last day of competition is going to be extremely tough if not impossible.

Fireworks explode at the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the National Stadium, August 8, 2008. The stadium is also known as the Bird's Nest. [Agencies]

At the same time I am not a fan of only using gold medals to decide a country’s place on the table. This has led to the obsession we are now seeing with golds. Think of the athletes who have broken down crying after ‘failing’ their country by only winning silver.

Finishing fourth, used to be considered the worst position to finish, so close to the medals but you get nothing. However, this all consuming gold rush we have seen leaves anyone who gets a silver or bronze now feeling like the poor guy in fourth, ‘close but no cigar’.

I personally think every medal should be celebrated. After all there can only be one person in first place and all these athletes have worked extremely hard. If you take the case of US gymnast Nastia Liukin who got the same score as a Chinese gymnast but came second due to a complex equation to decide the winner, it seems a little harsh to rubbish silvers. There are many athletes who are overjoyed just to be at the Olympics even if they finish last, like a Palestinian swimmer who only had a 12m pool to train in.

It would in that case make more sense, I think, to give the medals a weighting for example a gold is worth three or four points, a silver two and a bronze one point, and then work out who is on top. That way all medals are considered an achievement with a gold still being the ultimate prize. Then again who am I to argue?

Whatever the case, using the internationally accepted method China is on top, no questions asked. Congratulations to them, they have certainly worked for it.

In the end the Olympics is about many things with winning being only one of them. I just hope everyone gives credit where credit is due when they look back on the spectacle we have witnessed over the last 12 days and the medallists come to be accepted for just what they have achieved.