Who Will Win the Medal Count?

The unfortunate news of Liu Xiang's injury and withdrawal from the 110m hurdles not withstanding, China has a lot to be proud of in this Olympics. According to the most current listing on beijing2008.com, China leads the US in gold medals by a huge margin, 43-26. It would appear that the battle for most golds is safely in China's hands, barring some unfathomable dominance in the remaining events on the part of the US.

Locals Watching an Individual Gymnastics Competition on Changshou Road

However, in the overall medal count, the US still holds a slim lead, 79-76 (the remaining sports would seem to favor the US holding on to its lead). In previous Olympics, I had always thought overall medal count to be of more importance than the gold count. But most Chinese people that I have spoken with regarding this topic have said something to the effect of "of course gold is the most important", and the Chinese media list the medal count accordingly; meanwhile most US sources list the medal count as an overall ranking. Really, I don't think either is as important as people make them out to be, but my personal opinion is that overall medal count is a better barometer of a country's overall athletic culture. But, surely gold medals are still worth more than silver or bronze, right?

Well, some columnists have recently suggested a sort of weighted point system should be used to determine an unofficial overall ranking (ie. Gold = 3 pts, Silver = 2, and Bronze = 1). Well if that were the case, the current ranking would be as follows:
1. China, 176 pts
2. USA, 157 pts
3. Russia, 76 pts
4. Great Britain, 74 pts
5. Australia, 69 pts
And so on down the list. But the problem here for a freedom-loving, sushi-eating American such as myself, is that the Red, White, and Blue still doesn't come out on top.

So, purely for laughs, I've decided to devise my own medal count, which will take into account only sports which I (and my football and baseball loving friends) care about, or ordinarily consider sports. So, with that in mind, the following adjustments will be made: men's diving is out, but women's diving is in (for more, see Guo Jingjing); women's (children's?) gymnastics are definitely out (I don't care whether it's a good rule or bad, but it's pretty clear the Chinese team cheated on the age rule. Also, the Karolyis are a little creepy to me, don't know why.); arbitrarily, badminton is out, and table tennis is in; all shooting is out, (I saw pot-bellies on some of the competitors, and when I see pot-bellies in sports, I expect them to be quickly offset by a crushing tackle, a 400 ft. home-run, or a 97 mph fastball.), though archery remains; goodbye trampoline, your sport is a joke (to me); and finally, women's weightlifting* is out.

So where does that leave us? According to my calculations for the first ever for-entertainment-purposes-only-sports-that-actually-count Medal Count, the rankings now look like this:
Overall:
#1: USA, with 64 medals
#2: China, with 43 medals

Gold medal count:
#1: China, with 24 golds, 10 silvers, and 9 bronzes
#2: USA, 22 golds, 19 silvers, and 23 bronzes
(OH NO! Well, this one should change if basketball comes through, women's beach volleyball continues to roll, and the Track & Field athletes pull their weight.)

Point system:
#1: USA 127 touchdowns (points shall be known as touchdowns if the US is leading)
#2: China 101 TDs

So what's the point of all this? First, medal counts are probably not a good gauge of any country’s collective athletic prowess (if it were so, the Republic of Michael Phelps would be more athletic than approximately 60 medal-winning countries, including a billion plus Indians), or its sporting culture. Second, any medal count should be looked at with a grain-of-salt, and when I make the rules, the US always wins!!

*On women's weightlifting: If the US women had won any medals, I would absolutely be counting them, as there is a thriving amateur culture of US lifters. However, as far as I can tell, women's weightlifting in China goes against many Chinese cultural norms regarding the expectations of a woman's behavior. I could see a young American girl taking up weight-lifting for a love of the sport, and having the support and even encouragement of her parents; however, I would generally say that exactly the opposite would happen were a young Chinese girl to decide that weightlifting was her sport. Basically, I have seen many women in weight-rooms at health-clubs and my schools in the US, but can't remember one instance of the same in China.

The Chinese women that dominated this year's weightlifting competition came from a government athletic program, and for the most part come from peasant, country backgrounds. They were hand-picked by officials at a young age after showing physical promise of some kind, and then their parents signed them up for the elite sporting schools that offered one of the few roads out of their villages. This may not be true for every single competitor, but it is for the majority. This system goes against everything that I see as good about sport in the US (ie. spirit of competition and love of the game). There have been a few different articles about this system lately, but one of the best comes from the Wall Street Journal and can be seen here.