On Olympic Medal Counts

I've seen a few stories this morning pointing to the US as having "won" the 2010 Olympic Winter Games "Medal Count", and I have to admit to being a bit put off by this. In no other sporting event that I am aware of is losing (and by that, I mean not winning) afforded as much credit as in the Olympics. Here's what I mean.

As I scan the "medal standings this morning, I see the following:

Country Gold Silver Bronze Total
US 9 15 13 37
Germany 10 13 7 30
Canada 14 7 5 26

So there you have it. US wins. USA! USA! USA!

But wait a second--we "win" because we "lost" more often. Presumably, we didn't lose by as much as Germany or Canada--but then again, we're not looking at medals as a percentage of events entered. We're looking at total medals--a count that assigns third place a value equal to coming in first place. This seems inappropriate to me.

Yes, yes. I know. It's all about the competition, the Olympic ideal, the stories behind the medals. And gosh darn it, a Silver's quite an accomplishment! Yes it is. So is losing the Super Bowl. So is losing the World Series. But at the heart of that status is a LOSS, and society rightly views it that way.

So if we're going to have a "medal count", I would advocate that it track only golds. But if honor must be paid to those who lost, why not "weight" the count, assigning 3 points to a gold, 2 to a silver and 1 to a bronze? Using this math, the order of merit would be: US (70) Germany (63) and Canada (61). This doesn't change the order of outcome in this year's games, but it does afford additional weight to actually WINNING events.