I've not been following the Olympics much - I'm interested, but not that interested, and I'm a little uneasy about the way that the coverage we get here assumes that we're only interested in the Australian competitors. Now I don't want to sound too effete and metropolitan here - and I especially don't want to sound un-Australian - but I can't help thinking there are other great stories, some raw human drama, in the Games that doesn't necessarily involve Grant Hackett or Stephanie Rice.
I was looking in the paper today and I caught sight of the Medal Tally. There's two ways to represent this. You can say that what matters is the total number of medals that have been won (Gold = Silver = Bronze = A Medal), or you can do it by ranking the countries by the number of Gold Medals won, and using Silver and then Bronze as a tie-breaker. The second method makes a lot more sense to me. I mean, when we talk about Michael Phelps we say he won 8 Gold Medals in this olympics, not that he won 8 Medals. Had he won silver in that one where the other guy got really close it would have changed the story completely.
Of course I'm sensitive to the argument that this sort of strict ranking implies that a Gold is worth more than any number of Silvers. And you could conceivably work out some sort of exchange rate to allow for that (5 Bronze = Silver, 5 Silver = Gold) but we'd all have different ones, and it'd be just arbitrary.
Anyway, I was looking at the medal tally today and I was shocked and dismayed to see that Great Britain is ahead of Australia. Yes, you read that right. Great Britain. I don't begrudge them this, I'm just a little surprised. China, yes. US, yes. But Britain? If they had medals for comedy, littering, drinking, vomiting, being cross and looking sick I could understand it.
6 comments:
Yes but on a medal per head of population we did very well - apparently only beated by Slovenia [or was it Slovakia ] !
Glad to see we beat you on any of the methods you discuss...although I suspect the average Pom spent a lot less time looking at the Aussie tally than the other way round.
As for your comment on the British propensity to vomit - I thought Mr MacKenzie late of Moonee Ponds wrote the book on that one.
Re the TV coverage point - I was in France for the whole time, so what coverage I saw was on French TV. The focus there was equally Francocentric, with endless coverage of Handball - a sport with which you and your readers may be unfamiliar. You will not be surprised to learn that France took the gold in the men's competition. I think it is a tad revealing that the team they beat in a hard-fought final was...Iceland.
David - are you VT?
Indeed I am
well...come on....share it...who or what is VT? Am I VT? I don't think I am. God I wish I could get to sleep.
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