They seemed to take 'winning' the Olympics more seriously than most countries do. China still has a long way to go to catch up to the US
That I agree. I bet they'll throw all their medals in the garbage if they don't win the hockey tournament.
Funny that the official website of Vancouver 2010 lists their medal count ordered by total medals. Do they switch it when this wraps up with Canada winning the most golds?
Probably because they know that eventually the official IOC standings will favour them anyway - but also they don't want to make unhappy their rich neighbors. And $$$ is vital! ...
It's just an American thing. Nobody else does it like that, for obvious reasons. Anyway, who owns the podium? The gold medallist. They stand above everyone else, have their flag raised above everyone else's and everyone has to stand and listen to their anthem.
I guess to an Aussie Vancouver might as well be "American," but it is in fact in Canada, the country that is winning the Gold medal count yet whose organizing committee is using your supposedly "American" approach.
I don't know what the deal is with that, because the Canadian media is all using the Golds count (as they have in every previous Olympics). The IOC also count by Golds. Let's call it the sole exception that proves the rule.
It is much more impressive to win a gold medal than a silver or a bronze because it means that you are the best in the world in that sport. Only a couple countries in the world rank the countries by total medals. Everyone else by amount of gold medals.
Total Medal Count (after 16 days) United States: 9-14-13 36 Germany: 10-12-7 29 Canada: 13-7-5 25 Norway: 8-8-6 22 Austria: 4-6-6 16 Russia: 3-5-7 15 South Korea: 6-6-2 14 China: 5-2-4 11 France: 2-3-6 11 Sweden: 5-2-3 10 Switzerland: 6-0-3 9 Netherlands: 4-1-3 8 Czech Republic: 2-0-4 6 Poland: 1-3-2 6 Italy: 1-1-3 5 Japan: 0-3-2 5 Finland: 0-1-3 4 Australia: 2-1-0 3 Belarus: 1-1-1 3 Slovakia: 1-1-1 3 Croatia: 0-2-1 3 Slovenia: 0-2-1 3 Latvia: 0-2-0 2 Great Britian: 1-0-0 1 Estonia: 0-1-0 1 Kazakhstan 0-1-0 1
CBC counts by most medals: http://www.cbc.ca/olympics/content/medals/index.html Personally, I like that the US will win the most medals and Canada will win the most golds. Both nations will apparently end with the highest in each category in Winter Olympic history and have much to celebrate.
Canada has won most golds, but it just doesn't feel like they dominated like China did two years prior.
Well of course not... the proportion of events won by Canada is far, far lower than the proportion won by the Chinese.
CBC is not the official 'voice' of the Winter Olympics. Who gives the last word on the matter is IOC. CBC covers NHL, NBA, NFL, MBL, MLS and wouldn't want to be unpleasant to its 300 million neighbors of the South. They know that Canada won the Olympics. By a tight margin but won.
The only country that follows this ranking, as far as I understand, is the US. Everybody else uses golds as the standard. edit - well, I guess Canada does, too.
Canada is extremely Americanized. The only difference between us and Americans is we don't have blue in the flag they wave. I think this similarity is the root of the anti-America attitude in this country.