While Australia’s Olympic team underperformed at the Rio 2016 games, is the medal tally the best way to measure our team’s performance?
The medal tally table sees a country that achieves only one gold medal placed higher than a country that achieves ten silver and ten bronze.
But which country has had the more successful Olympic Games?
Media organisations such as the New York Times have suggested a weighted points system, where a gold medal is worth four points, a silver medal two points, and a bronze one point. This seems fairer, but why four, two, one, and not three, two, one – or maybe five, three and one?
On top of that, why shouldn’t we normalise for population and wealth? It stands to reason that countries with more people will possess more individuals with the potential to become Olympic champions, and that wealthier countries can devote more resources to developing those individuals.
Is it also worth measuring the number of different sports or discliplines a country achieves medals in? Or the number of individual medallists?
A top five or top-ten finish on the official table is a simple but blunt way of measuring Olympic success. Maybe if we had more sophisticated measurement and performance targets we could make better informed decisions about funding, and more insightful evaluations of our team’s performance.
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