Waiting to see the U.S. media revise its "most medals = top of olympics table" stance and presentaton if U.S. manages to overtake China in the number of Golds with less overall medals.
According to this www the USA is below expectations and ROC well above
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com...s-medal-count/
Yeah but if you look at the Financial Times alternative medal table, Australia comes 2rd (beating China!) and New Zealand does shit coming in around 25th spot. This medal table is produced by a team of labour economists, based of a number of factors such as medal hauls in previous games, population size, and GDP per capita
https://ig.ft.com/tokyo-olympics-alt...e-medal-table/
What is the purpose of the Olympics for a government?
If you argue that to promote sport in society is a key factor then this can perhaps be reflected on how diverse the sporting achievement is. If we take the top 10 medal scoring countries and then look the % of medals come from the countries top 10 sports out of the 28 different sports.
GB & NI - 68%
USA - 69%
Italy - 75%
Germany - 76%
Japan - 76%
Russia - 76%
China - 78%
France - 79%
Australia - 82%
Netherlands - 92%
Even though the US is highly reliant on the generous medal giving in swimming they still have breadth to their sporting abilities.
If the ranking was based on Government spending based on GDP I suspect the US would easily lead the table