The 'Real' Medal Count (adjusted)

The Olympic Games are a few days over now, and in the aftermath of all the splendor on display in these past few weeks it feels appropriate to comment on the most important outcome of these games:

The medal count.

As much attention that was paid to each of the competitions and the athletes in them, it might not be a stretch to say that an equal amount of attention was paid to the medal count - both gold and total - especially by the American and Chinese audiences. The importance of the medal count has been somewhat debated, with a few making the case that the athletes, not the countries, are the only competitors that matter. In fact, the total medal count for each country is not even an official Olympic statistic, just an artificial category created by the media. And every single media outlet covering the games gave an updated medal count after each night of competition.

But there is real interest in the medal count, and not just from audiences, from the countries themselves. A gold medal can bring prestige to any country if but only for a few fleeting days and weeks, but the importance of that time in the spotlight is something that countries cherish. For that, many countries are willing to reward their gold-medal athletes with money, houses, cars, and other elements of wealth. But for many years now, China has gone beyond just offering rewards for their athletes.

The Chinese government has instituted a national program - called Project 119 - in order to increase the number of gold medals in specific sports, ones that have the most gold medals available. China also has 221 state-run sports academies that take children from a very young age and encompass them with rigorous, daily training routines in order to have them prepared for athletic stardom and Olympic competition that are still many years down the road.

With all this evidence, it is hard to dispute that the medal count is not important. So how did the countries fare? Well, if this were an official event, the United States (110) would win gold, China (100) would take home the silver, and Russia (72) would claim the bronze in the "total medal" competition. In the "total gold" category - which some claim to have equal, if not more, importance than the total number of medals - the Chinese (51) claimed the top spot, with the USA (36) taking silver, and Russia (23) again taking the bronze.

For the most part, all of these medals were won fair and square, however these totals can be amended at any time when (and hopefully this does not occur) athletes are proven to have cheated through illegal steroids or banned substances (or even, perhaps, age). There is no time-table of when these discoveries can be made, Marion Jones has already taught us that Olympic medals can be stripped at any time. So for the time being, the "official"-unofficial results end with the United States and China as the top two countries in both categories.

But sometimes appearances are more than meets the eye.

When one thinks of the Olympic games, thoughts immediately turn towards truly hard fought athletic competitions that test the strength, speed, and endurance of any person at the highest level of sport in all the world. And then when one looks at the roster of events for this year's Olympics, thoughts turn to questions with the most prevalent being: "That's a sport?"

Its true, the Olympic games are riddled with head-scratchers and eyebrow-raisers that have a good number of audiences giving a collective "huh?" when television cameras focus in on sports such as race walking, trampoline, and table tennis. How can these events, and many others, be considered good enough to be Olympic sports? There are 28 events in the Olympics, and a few of them are greatly under qualified when it comes to being classified as a sport. And even if some have compelling enough arguments to be classified as sport, they are hardly worthy of the Olympics.

With this in mind, the medal count is somewhat misleading as all the events are jumbled together. So in order to determine a more precise measure of a country's athletic prowess, a simple solution was designed to sort through the clutter and separate the real and faux events. Those events deemed not worthy of Olympic competition were discounted and, along with a few other adjustments, a more accurate medal count was created.

This is the real medal count (adjusted).

Before the revealing of the adjusted numbers, here are some the explanations and thought processes that went into creating this new total:

Trampoline
Out. While all of the twists, turns, and flips are highly difficult, preforming these moves on a trampoline is exponentially easier than preforming them in the floor exercise, balance beam, or uneven bars. Any person that gets on a trampoline can automatically preform feats that could not normally preform on solid ground. The trampoline is an aid, and therefore can't be used in competition.

Badminton and Table Tennis
Both out. These sports are variations of tennis, which is a legitimate Olympic sport. But these two smaller mutations of the sport are played on smaller surfaces and do not require the same amount of athletic ability or skill. For that reason, these two are discounted as Olympic events.

Synchronized Swimming and Diving
Both out. It will be conceded that these events require a decent amount of skill, but they are stylistics sports which are judged by third party observers. More importantly, these sports do not exhibit the traditional elements of competition which seek to determine the biggest, strongest, and fastest competitors and reward them accordingly. It can be argued that gymnastics as a whole falls into this category, but gymnastics also involves extreme levels of strength, balance, and endurance that put them into another category altogether and make them legitimate sporting competitions. Nothing shown in synchronized swimming or diving compares to those levels of athleticism, so therefore the are deemed unworthy of Olympic competition.

Sailing
Out. Much like equestrian, the biggest determining factor in winning and losing is the vessel. When an external object can account for most of the competition, then it can't be classified as a true Olympic event.

Shooting
Out. Archery is the original and true test of accuracy and aim. While shooting may require vast amounts of skill, it is simply not up to par in terms of being and Olympic competition. The competitors in the the shooting events can't even be the best in the world; the true great snipers are exactly that: snipers. If a contingent of military snipers from around the world were competing I'm sure they would blow the competition out of the water.

Equestrian
Out. All of it. The most athletic competitors in these events are the horses, and until they start giving the medals to the horses then equestrian cannot be considered eligible for Olympic sport. It is not being argued that equestrian competitions are not difficult or that they require some skill, but the brunt of the skill is being executed by the horses. There is no way around that fact.

Modern Pentathlon
Out. While some of the events included in the modern pentathlon are most definitely considered sports and worthy of Olympic competition, two of them (show riding and pistol shooting) have already been deemed not sports. Therefore, the entire event must be thrown out.

Rhythmic Gymnastics
Very out. Gymnastics already has an artistic/rhythmic styled event, and its called the floor exercise. An article was written by a former gymnasts on this very subject. She said that as she was into gymnastics when she was young, but as she got older the gap in skill level between her and her fellow gymnasts started to become a little more evident. For that reason, the coaches and instructors moved her to the rhythmic competition. Basically, she wasn't good enough for regular gymnastics competition so she was placed in rhythmic gymnastics. This story alone points to the fact that rhythmic gymnastics is a lesser form of gymnastics not suitable for Olympic competition.

Race Walking
So very out. The true test of speed and endurance is to run. Race walking is exactly what it sounds like: walking as fast as you can without running. When a walker is determined to have broken into a running stride, they are given a warning. Three infractions and the walker is disqualified. All of this is determined by third-party judges, which can create controversy. But aside from the human error portion of the event, the entire concept of racing but not at full speed is enough to disqualify race walking from Olympic competition.

Team Sports
Team sports that do NOT have teammates competing simultaneously are not considered eligible, with exceptions coming in track and swimming relays and gymnastics. Therefore, events like team archery and team fencing are out. With these events, a team score is comprised of each team member's individual score. What, then, is the difference between team fencing and regular fencing? Broken down its still just one-on-one and so it cannot be deemed a team sport, so they are out.

Weight Class Sports
Not out, just amended. These sports include boxing, judo, taekwondo, wrestling, and weightlifting. These events have FAR too many weight classes. Taekwondo has the fewest with four, judo has seven, weightlifting has eight, boxing has 11, and wrestling has 14 (seven in each category, Greco-Roman and freestyle). Also, boxing, taekwondo, judo, and wrestling each award two gold medals for each weight class, which means that four people are awarded medals instead of the standard two. All said, there are too many medals awarded in these sports. Combining a few of these weight classes in each of these sports would make for far better competition and a more accurate medal count. Therefore, in order to compensate for this, only HALF of the medals awarded in these events will be counted in the adjusted tally.

So, after much deliberation and numerous calculations, the adjusted medal count for the top three finishers at the Beijing Olympics are:

1) USA - 94 total, 31 gold
2) China - 66 total, 29 gold
3) Russia - 41 total, 12 gold

While this is not an exact science, debates of this nature have prompted questions of the legitimacy of certain events in the Olympics. Feel free to scrutinize these definitions and calculations and offer you're own, unique view on the subject.