Winter Olympics Vancouver – What is the Best Measure of Success?
We’re all familiar with the medal tally that comes out of any Olympics, summer or winter and there’s much conjecture about the relevance of the medal tally. From the recent Winter games that were completed in Vancouver, the overall medal tally (i.e summation of gold, silver & bronze medals) was as follows:-
United States 37
Germany 30
Canada 26.
Based on the overall tally Australia came in 18th with 3 medals.
However, if success is ranked by gold medals then the leaderboard is
1. Canada
2. Germany
3 United States and Norway.
Australia comes in at 14th.
Recently though there was an article referenced on the Freakonomics website, where they recast the medal count by market value. The gold and the silver medals are actually 92.5% silver, while the bronze medals are mostly copper. So the gold medal, which is really just gold plated, is valued at $537, the Silver medal is valued at about $300 and the bronze medals are valued at about $3.40.
When the medal tally is ranked by market value then it is as follows:-
1. Canada $9,635,
2. United States 2nd $9,377
Australia was 14th with $1,374.
However, if you count every medal won by a country, i.e. one for each player, on the hockey team and the bobsled and so forth, then Canada was very much clearly out in front with $41,000 of value and 68 gold medals. The USA with 12 gold medals and had a market value of $25, 719 in value and based on this measure Australia was 15th with $1,374.
Now these are an interesting aside, but the interesting question is “What is the best measure of success that we should be looking at from an Olympics?” As you know, I always try to boil it down to the one main number, the one main thing we focus on and I’ve been trying to consider in my mind, what is the important measure for the Olympics.
Now as a little context, some years ago I had some involvement with the New Zealand men’s kayak team for the Athen Summer Olympics. I assisted in taking some video, during their training and providing other support roles as they were training on the Maroochy river here in Queensland (yes it was the New Zealand team).
The conversation with these people in thea New Zealand team was purely focused on the Gold Medal. Two of them went on to win silver medals, and they were happy to have won a medal, but there was no doubt that they believed that they’d lost gold, rather than won silver. Also the athletes looked at what their personal best times were, and they looked at how that compared to where they’d been.
I’m not going to conclude or give an answer on this post. I am going to ask for comments but, I believe that the athletes would say its gold medals, or personal best times.
It’s interesting to think that the media focus has been significantly on the gold medal tally, but I would like to see what the tally of personal best achievements was. When we think of the motto of the Olympics, ‘Swifter, Higher, Stronger’, I think it’s probably in the spirit of the Olympics to look at the personal best times.
But of course, if I was a Canadian I would be looking at value based on market value and counting every gold medal awarded to every player, because this places them with 68 gold, 15 silver and 8 bronze to a value of $41,043. A clear winner, go Canada!
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