Olympic medal count. Who is winning?

[Asuka]

I mean at this point we should rank countries Olympic medals by how much charity they do for the world.

[FastDan1]

[Album] imgur.com

[Wendell_Wagner]

There are many ways to measure things in the Olympics. This is from Amber and Jenny’s segment on Late Night with Seth Meyers. They point out that if you limited your measurements to just women’s events, the dominance of Americans would be more obvious:

Amber Ruffin and Jenny Hagel Recap the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

[That_Don_Guy]

@glowacks

@Telemark

But some poorer nations are allowed exemptions to send athletes that wouldn’t otherwise meet qualifying standards.

It looks like this was removed for athletics recently. There used to be an “A” standard and a “B” standard. If you had only people who met the “B” standard, you could only send one of them. If you had multiple people meet the “A” standard, you could send them all, up to the limit for the team. Now there is one standard that is slightly easier than the previous “A” standard. It’s supposedly so they’ll have a better idea of how many competitors there will be in building facilities and such, now that random countries can’t send one underpowered athlete who has no chance of winning. It would be hard to predict before because while those B athletes might not be competitive, they and their countries might just like being at the Olympics and they aren’t woefully underpowered since there was at least some skill requirement.

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1026794/iaaf-confirm-single-entry-standards-for-rio-2016-olympic-games

I don’t know what it’s like for other disciplines though.

Actually, every country does get to send at least one male and one female athlete in one event in track & field (usually the 100m), and at least one male and one female athlete in one event in swimming (usually the 50m freestyle). World Athletics (formerly IAAF), the orgainzation that runs the track & field events, sets a “target number” of how many athletes can qualify in an event, and if not enough of them meet the standard, they will invite additional athletes (example: Cole Hocker in the 1500m - his best time was about 1/4 second slower than the qualifying standard). The old A/B standard was last used in 2012.

Note that swimming still uses the A & B Standard method; a country can send two swimmers in an event if they both meet the A standard, or one if they meet the B standard.

And speaking of lists, here’s one I worked out: the number of athletes per country that won at least one gold medal:
USA - 102
Japan - 66
France - 64
China - 53
Great Britain - 38
I’m not 100% certain of the accuracy, as in some cases, the list of athletes exceeds the number that could have possible competed, so I may be overcounting these.

“How do you get 102 for the USA?” Well, each of the 12 men’s basketball players got one, each of the 13 women’s water polo players got one, the eight swimmers (four in the preliminary; four in the final) in the men’s 4x100 medley relay each got one, and so on. Note that anybody who won more than one gold (e.g. Athing Mu) is counted only once.