Fools gold: How to land on top of the Olympic medal board

The Daily Advertiser's Tahlia Sinclair explains the different ways medal tallies are being calculated at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Transcript

00:00Australia is winning the Olympics, or is the US, or maybe Fiji?

00:07Media outlets across the globe are calculating the different ways that their Olympians are winning medals.

00:13While traditionally we only count the gold medals won by any country, America has taken a slightly different choice.

00:19Focusing on their entire medal count, that means their bronze medals and their golds,

00:24the US have inflated themselves to first position on most of their charts.

00:28But they're not the only ones doing some funky dunky things.

00:31Looking over in Europe, Euronews has been spotted calculating the entire continent of golds into one table.

00:38Per capita is the other way that we're seeing medals calculated.

00:41That is, what's the population size of a country and how does it impact their chances of a medal?

00:46Small countries like Fiji and Slovenia have rocketed up this calculation.

00:51Taking on the American system, Fiji would top that list.

00:55But if we're only taking into account gold, Slovenia is the smallest nation to have won an event so far.

01:00Another way that we could look at this is, what about the girls?

01:03Australia's seven gold medals so far have all been won by women, and while we would love to see some men up on the podium,

01:09that's pretty cool if you ask me.

01:12While we're sure that inevitably the US and their fantastic track and field athletes will pip us a little bit at the post,

01:19for now, it's pretty cool to have more medals than them.

01:23Maybe just don't tell them that we're making fun of them though.