What time is the 100m freestyle?
Isn’t the Olympics about excellence and champions? All credit to silver and bronze medallists, but it doesn’t seem the main goal is to measure sporting system strength, and if it were, I’m not sure why any particular arbitrary points system would be justified over another (1 gold worth 3 bronzes? 4? 5?), or why the cutoff should be at bronze medallists.
Seems fairest for places that pursue excellence and achieve it despite their small size or other disadvantages.
As consolation prizes for being near the top?Why do they bother giving silver and bronze if it’s only about the winner then? The top three are honored, that’s how it works.
I think you missed the implicit point about clarity. How many silver and bronze medallists equal one gold medallist to you, and do you think everyone will objectively agree on your standard?
Bdw’s point was that the U.S. presentation is weird. Everyone is free to measure whatever they want to, but if “The top three are honored, that’s how it works.” is your point, then would it not be equally plausible to say the current order of arrangement globally is also “how it works”?
Maybe a more intellectually consistent argument with what you’re saying is overall medal count as the U.S. paper quoted did. At least that measures achievement (according to your standard of the first three being honoured), without trying to (have an arbitrary standard to) equate gold, silver and bronze medallists.
Technically (again), all athletes get medals for participating. It's just the first three in each event get to stand on a podium. In fact, podiums and the gold/silver/bronze tiering are more recent.
People can slice and dice it any way they want, and most of these viewpoints will have some justification, somewhere. But saying that there is one 'right way to do it' is totally arbitrary, whatever that way is.
Personally, I would hope that anyone who was good enough and put in enough work to make it into the competition would be 'honored'.
Up until recently I thought ROC is Rep. of China , until it became too many gold medals
Too late to edit, but tossing this in because it's the 'banter' thread in anti-productivity:
Except for people who have been found guilty of cheating with performance enhancing drugs. Screw them for tainting their entire sport and the efforts of other competitors.
I have no issue with things like the runner who failed a test for smoking weed a week after her mother died, but the state-sponsored PED programs really wrecked the appeal of the Olympics for me.