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How to list Olympic medal wins by countries?

I've seen two way the number of medal wins have been published: 1. Order on the list is based on quantity of medals won regardless of medal type (gold, silver, bronze). 2. Order on the list is based the quantities of the medal types -- gold followed by silver and then by bronze. Which is more accurate measure in terms of listing by countries?

Public Comments

1. 2, since golds is the most "valuable", and it shows that, that person was did the best performance in that sport or area.
2. The order of the list doesn't change the results. Why are so many worried? Did you win these medals yourself?
3. Do a search of YA This question has been answered over 330 times already (no kidding) Historically the medal count is by Gold Medal. Go to the OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC MOVEMENT at: http://www.olympic.org/uk/games/index_uk... and you will see EVERY Summer and Winter Olympic games from Athens in 1896 until today. Select an individual Olympics and you will see toward the bottom right, "Medals By Country" This does not mean that it is the ONLY way to measure medal counts, just that it has always been the International Olympic Movement's offical counting methodology. Now wait for 46 opinons to the contrary. Good Luck
4. The official list places countries with the most gold at the top. Where 2 nations have the same number of gold, they are graded by the number of silver. If they also have the same number of silver, they are ranked by bronze. Tables listing nations in order of total medals are not the official table, and are designed purely for spin, eg to make Americans feel superior to China.
5. Gold first is the only sensible way to do it. The reason this question keeps coming up is because counting the total medal count looks dumb and people query why people do dumb things. Hey Mr Phelps would you mind swapping your 8 gold medals for 9 bronze ones? I know it would mean that you were actually a loser and third rate, but it would put you higher up the Yahoo/NBC list. The USA media is being totally ridiculed about the way they present the medal table Check this out http://www.smh.com.au/news/off-the-field/al-jazeera-follows-uss-olympics-lead/2008/08/22/1219262487056.html A lot of people have said other countries do it by total medal count. They do not and have never done so. See the BBC link from 2000 below. A lot of people have said the the US media have always done it this way. That's only half true. Some have and some haven't. Why do most of the US media do it this way? I don't know, but there is no logic to it and no-one else in the world does it this way. Certainly not the IOC. They are the governing body. It's not up to anyone else to determine what medals mean. The system used by the US media means that 15 Bronze medals are worth more than than 10 Gold and 4 Silver which is clearly nonsense. A gold is clearly worth more than a bronze. You could perhaps award a number of points for each type of medal, but how many points G=5,S=3, B=1 or G=3,S=2, B=1? Such a system could be weighted in so many different ways that there could never be any agreement. That's why no-one does it this way. There may be a precedent for this though if you look at the New York Times article from 1912 it says that the USA won the Olympics with the most points. However AFAIK this seems to be an invention of the New York Times or some other body not associated with the IOC. The IOC do not award points per medal and they do not award an overall prize for "winning the Olympics" - this is an invention of the media. There is no exchange rate between gold medals and silver/bronze medals they are not like currency. Winning once outshines not winning a million times. Without any agreement about a gold being worth 3 bronzes or whatever the only sensible way to rank it is the way the IOC and the rest of the world do it. In this scheme a gold is worth an infinite number of silvers and bronzes. I would have thought that this would equate with the US sporting mentality where winning is everything and coming second is nothing. I'm not belittling silver and bronze medals, The thing about winning is everything is an American invention - see the Wikipedia link.
6. The follow list of medal count can be seen at the link below http://www.nbcolympics.com/medals/index.html http://content.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/beijing/medals.aspx http://2008games.nytimes.com/olympics/medals.asp Good luck 1st USA 2nd China 3rd Russia
7. Those with the most golds should be first, because gold means that you won the game, were #1, the best, the first winner. Honestly, silver and bronze are just consolation medals. Whats next? Platinum? Tantalum? hehe, or why not give certificates of recognition? Then the US will have a count of 600. Were just being nice by including silver and bronze, from the influence of our teachers. Plus, having the secondary medals help keep an athlete humble. Though we arent the #1 winners overall, we should at least be a model in sportsmanship. Gold medals tainted by arrogance or deceit arent worth it. I certainly dont respect those who get them that way.
8. If each Gold medal were a Pound, each silver a Shilling and each Bronze 1 Pence then China would be richer. Plain and simple. Gold is worth more, if it were all equal then all the medals would be the same color