Olympic thoughts

Yep, 8 golds....very impressive. 

I noticed the exact same thing. Chinese sites ranking by number of golds won, and others ranking by all medals won. It is interesting that the Chinese win so many gold medals compared to silver and bronze, it seems normal to me that a nation would generally have a relatively even distribution between gold, silver, and bronze. But it seems China's team is either the best at an event or not even close.

the olympics have gone off without much trouble, the few protests that have occurred where all small and mopped up fast. sadly the security and fear of protest surrounding the games has shut down much of the pageantry and sheer fun that the city should be enjoying. 

Switching a pretty girl for an ugly one and having her lip sync is funny...and ridiculous. stupid decision by the authorities.

well, after years of buildup and coverage and then the events themselves, the Olympics have come and gone.

I've been away from Ningbo since the end of July, but this forum has been pretty slow this Summer. Have many others from the expat community returned home for the Summer or is Ningbo rocking as usual?

God bless, Olympic Beijing gone safely...nobody hurts except two American in Beijing.

I know, there are several ways to show who is the best nation, but at the end it comes to the official counting from olympic committee based on most Gold medals.This was also done at the Athens Games 2004 and all previous games as well.You can see the history at: http://www.olympic.org/uk/games/past/index_uk.asp?OLGT=1&OLGY=2004Steve

I remember back in the US-Soviet days, it was all about "the medal count", which was a simple count of the medals won.  They also had this method whereby a gold was 3, silver 2, bronze 1.  Sometimes it was 5, 3, 1. 

For the website, it was written recently, so they can order them any way that they like.  Personally, I think it's a bunch of bull, saying that one country is "superior" or "more cultured" than another country, due to Olympic medals, but here we are.  I found a website that ranked Olympic medals by the population/medals, or number of athletes sent/medals, and neither of them had China anywhere near the top.  See rank by population and rank by GDP.  There is another metric whereby the total number of medals is tallied.  For example, winning 4-man rowing counts for four medals, basketball for twelve, and so on.

Administrator, www.NingboGuide.com.

Pre Beijing '08 games New Zealand was ranked 6th in the world per capita as far as medals go. With a population just over 4 million we kick the living daylights outta Ningbo, and they have more people!!!

Best way is to count gold as 3 points silver as 2 points and bronze as 1 point add them up and the country with the most points wins......

in the true spirit of a non-political Olympics, medals wouldn't be counted according to nations at all. But since they are, let's wait and see who wins the Paralympics medal count before we properly judge who is the greatest nation

I think the medal count is just a silly marketing creation. If the Chinese olympic committee wants to win the most medals by investing heavily in sports with large numbers of medals and not much competition(ie air gun, diving) then that's cool. Certainly not all nations care equally about the total number of medals. For Americans, no number of gold medals in air gun, badminton, or similarly unpopular events could make up for a loss in basketball. For Jamaicans, a win in the 100meter is far more important than a rowing medal. Probably not every country can have a "successful" olympics, but with so many different goals more than one nation can feel to have "won", and that's a good thing.