>If you take, say, a decathlon, then the winner is the guy who did consistently well, maybe only coming 3rd in every event, and not necessarily being best in any. Now, if we say a gold medal is worth 3 points, a silver 2, and a bronze 1, then say one nation at the end had earned just 2 gold medals, and another 7 bronzes, which nation has a better sports record, ie which would come higher in the tables?
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>I've often thought this when viewing the medal tables. I think the golds trump any no. of silvers then bronzes, but it doesn't seem right to me.

There are a lot of other problems.

A swimmer can win a lot of medals. But a weightlifter can win just one medal. A weightlifter can compete one time with two style (snatch and clean and jerk) but can just win one medal.

You give two points for silver medal but I just watched a south african swimmer yesterday night and she think about "silver medal is nothing"... :))

Swimming goes good in this olympics...