Spurred

The London 2012 games were spectacular. Records were set and legends were self proclaimed. There were also amazing back stories, like those of South African track star Oscar Pistorius, U.S. runner Bryshon Nellum, Sudanese “lost boy” Lomong Lopez, and former World Vision sponsored child Nataly Landaverde.

Each Olympics though, NBC’s handling of the medal count is dubious. A total doesn’t tell the complete story. As any silver medalist will tell you, there is different worth to placing first, second or third. While Spurred applauds all of the athletes just for making it to the olympics, recalculated medal points are necessary to set the record straight. The formula is simple, Gold=3 points, Silver=2 points, Bronze=1 point. Multiply the points by the number of medals and total the score. This will be called the Medal Points. The top 25 now are:

Not much changed, still the United States clearly dominated. This doesn’t take into consideration population though. More people should generate a greater pool of talent to pull from, so the next table is the top 25 Medal Points divided by population (population was divided by 1 million to give a usable ratio).

But not all countries have the same resources. Richer countries should be able to field better athletes. So the next table presents the medal points divided by GDP (GDP was divided by 100 billion to yeild a more usable ratio).

Either way you look at it, Grenada and Jamaica are on top. What do you think of that Bob Costas? Or Fox News? The main point of doing this is to point out there are more ways to look at things. Digging deeper can bring out some surprises and maybe even generate new appreciations or intelligent questions. So nice work James Kirani, you won your country’s first medal ever and by doing so, put Grenada at the top of the medal count.

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