Just close your eyes and think who is the winner - only one name comes up! if usa had won 51 golds and china 37 with just ten higher no. of medals , i am sure no one would have argued about the winner. Grace is a big thing. The thing is USA has forgotten to lose at Olympics - so the lack of grace in admitting the winner! I came across similar rantings when Nastia won a silver in an individual event, when the gymnast who won the event actually fumbled. China didnt invent the new gymnastics scoring system. It was decided at a proper international forum. If the scoring system has its faults, the same applies to everyone - the chinese gymnasts adapted better to the new system by taking on difficult routines and thus gaining more starting points, but the scoring system was same for everyone. Seriously, its very amusing to see the poor grace in which USA media is taking the loss of a few medals! My writings here My profile here

everywhere? or just in the USA? The medal tables elsewhere rank things a bit differently Yahoo France http://fr.sports.yahoo.com/jeux-olympiqu... Yahoo australia http://au.sports.yahoo.com/olympics/ Yahoo Germany http://de.eurosport.yahoo.com/olympische... ABC australia http://www.abc.net.au/olympics/ British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) http://www.bbc.co.uk/ official site of the Olympic Games http://en.beijing2008.cn/ Reuters News Agency http://blogs.reuters.com/china/2008/08/23/china-assured-of-first-place-in-medals-table/ Turkish Daily News http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=113535 Lets be honest here. Gold is clearly worth more than Silver and Bronze. Take this as an example. China Russia and USA all compete in the first event of the Olympics. China wins gold, usa silver, Russia bronze. on the podium there are numbers. 3 under russia, 2 under USA, 1 under China. who is number 1? I think its fair to say that Chinas achievement is greater than that of USAs and Russia's. No? the medal table after that event would look like this 1. china 1 0 0 1 2. USA 0 1 0 1 3. Russia 0 0 1 1 it wouldnt say joint 1st between all of them. because thats not what happened. ok?

to be a truly first class athlete, you need to come first. thats how you get a gold medal. like china did. 51 times. how you can suggest that someone who came 3rd is as good an athlete in their chosen sport as someone who comes 1st, is beyond me. The very inclusion of 2nd and 3rd place prizes is not part of the original olympic format. Gold used to be the only medal. Why? because 1st is the most worthy of acknowledgement. 2nd and 3rd on the other hand? if they get a medal, why shouldnt 4th? or 5th and 6th? why not do a points score like formula 1? 12 for 1st 10 for second 8 for 3rd and so on. however you do it, the fact remains, there are more olympic events in which china has beaten the entire world than there are in which USA has. and yes team events still only count as 1 medal. they always have only counted as 1 medal. they always will. everyone else in the world seems to see that china won on both the official ioc medal count, a standard 321 points system, and the alternate 531 points system. Only the US bangs on about 'total medals' and team medals all counting. why didnt the US say team medals should all count before the games? maybe because they didnt realise they'd be beaten in an official reading of the rules then.

china did win because gold is the most important medal even if the US had more medals, say we add up the scores like this: gold 3 points, silver 2 points and bronze 1 point. the total points would be... China : gold 51 x 3 = 153 silver 21 x 2 = 42 bronze 28 x 1 = 28 TOTAL : 223 points USA: gold 36 x 3 = 108 silver 38 x 2 = 76 bronze 36 x 1 = 36 TOTAL : 220 points if country A had 30 bronze and country B had 29 gold it would not make sense that country A wins...just cause they have more medals..