Beijing Olympics - And the Real Winner is....

OK - I am going to deviate from our usual focus and play a little game.

If you look at the medal tables - http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/medals_table/default.stm

You will see the results that the media has been using. However the medals table seems to acknowledge only that the results are binary with a gold having the same value as a bronze. Given the extraordinary feats during these Games that seems hardly adequate. So I went back and looked at a handicap method. This is a common value of Gold = 4 points, Silver = 2 points and Bronze = 1 point. I then reordered the table.

The top 10 changes a bit!

Old Rank
United States
China
Russia
Great Britain
Australia
Germany
France
South Korea
Italy
Japan

New Rank
China
United States
Russia
Great Britain
Germany
Australia
South Korea
Japan
Italy
France

And here is the kicker....

If we used the old USSR as a full country - the medal count would be different . The Soviets would have just blown away both China and the USA for the undisputed crown. So the real winner is.... the USSR!

Ah the good old days........... ;-)

Oh yes - and bragging rights to the British over the Aussies for the first time since we don't know when they last had a better Olympics.

So till we meet again in London in 2012!

Cheers

Timothy

PS if you wish to challenge my mathematical skills please send me a note and I will send you the calculations.