Olympic Recount (Winter Edition)

During the last Summer Olympics in Beijing, I suggested that the Olympic rankings could be improved using a point system. In the Summer Olympics, rankings were determined in order of the most gold medals, followed by the most silver, then the most bronze, such that a team with only one gold medal overall would have outranked a team with seven silvers. The alternative I suggested at the time would have ranked teams by total points, where teams would have gotten 4 points for every gold medal, 2 for every silver, and 1 for every bronze.

In the just completed Vancouver Winter Olympics, the countries were ranked according to total number of medals. This is arguably fairer than the Summer Olympic system, but can still produce unfair situations where a country with, say, six bronze medals would outrank a country with five gold.

So, if we take the rankings of the Olympic teams as they are now:

United States 37 medals total (9 gold, 15 silver, 13 bronze)

Germany 30 (10, 13, 7)

Canada 26 (14, 7, 5)

Norway 23 (9, 8, 6)

Austria 16 (4, 6, 6)

Russia 15 (3, 5, 7)

South Korea 14 (6, 6, 2)

China 11 (5, 2, 4)

Sweden 11 (5, 2, 4)

France 11 (2, 3, 6)

Switzerland 9 (6, 0, 3)

Netherlands 8 (4, 1, 3)

Czech Republic 6 (2, 0, 4)

Poland 6 (1, 3, 2)

Italy 5 (1, 1, 3)

Japan 5 (0, 3, 2)

Finland 5 (0, 1, 4)

Australia 3 (2, 1, 0)

Belarus 3 (1, 1, 1)

Slovakia 3 (1, 1, 1)

Croatia 3 (0, 2, 1)

Slovenia 3 (0, 2, 1)

Latvia 2 (0, 2, 0)

Great Britain 1 (1, 0, 0)

Estonia 1 (0, 1, 0)

Kazakhstan 1 (0, 1, 0)

And apply that same 4-2-1 point system, we'd get the following results (teams that climb from their original rankings are highlighted in green, teams that drop are highlighted in red):

United States 79 points

Canada 75

Germany 73

Norway 58

South Korea 38

Austria 32

Russia 29

China 28

Sweden 28

Switzerland 27

Netherlands 21

France 20

Czech Republic 12

Poland 12

Australia 10

Italy 9

Japan 8

Belarus 7

Slovakia 7

Finland 6

Croatia 5

Slovenia 5

Latvia 4

Great Britain 4

Estonia 2

Kazakhstan 2

There are basically five changes going on here: (1) Canada passes Germany, (2) South Korea jumps ahead of both Austria and Russia, (3) Switzerland and the Netherlands both jump ahead of France, (4) Australia leaps ahead of Italy, Japan, and Finland, which is also (5) passed by Belarus and Slovakia.

Of course, the idea that these alternate rankings are "fairer" presupposes that a gold medal is worth twice as much as a silver, which is worth twice as much as a bronze. Intuitively, it seems fair to say that there should be a premium for winning. Then again, in some races, the difference between first, second, and third can be less than a second. Does it make sense to say that a gold is worth four times as much as a bronze under those circumstances? And once you start assigning points to results, why does it make sense to only apply them to first, second, and third place? What about fourth- and fifth-ranked competitors who come very close to winning a medal?

I would argue that these critiques of the point system say more about the arbitrariness of assigning rankings at these events in general, as opposed to the specifics of how you assign those ranks. Once you accept the idea that someone has to win gold, someone silver, and someone bronze, and that you're going to rank teams by some measure of their medal counts, I do think that a point system is fairer, even if it is still not a perfect indicator of performance.