Why Olympic Ranking Criteria Could Omit the Best Countries

Had the runner from Nauru won, he could have achieved stand-out Olympic fame for a tiny island. Located in the Pacific, Nauru’s economy had depended on the guano (bird poop) that fertilizer production needed until it ran out. As an island with a population below 13,000, Nauru’s Mr. Kakiouea is their sole Olympic competitor.

Winzar Kakiouea, Nauru’s Olympian:                                                                                             Nauru:

Other small countries too, could receive global fame. It just depends on Olympic ranking criteria.

Olympic Ranking Criteria

Typically, we count gold medals, then silver and bronze, to name the top country. Consequently, medal counts can take you to the top. Usually, except duing 1896, 1912, and 1964, the nations with the most medals also had more gold than anyone else.

But it does not have to be that way. They could measure success through a per capita approach. Then, smaller countries with fewer people would achieve the acclaim they deserve. After all, places like Nauru lack the resources of the larger nations. They cannot provide the financial support a runner needs. Runners with gold medals from those small places had even more challenges during their training months.

Other possibilities include adding together all medals won, without distinguishing among the three. They’ve also considered totaling medals received by individuals–a system that would benefit countries with more teams. As a teacher, it is familiar for me to hear an improvement rating that becomes your score. In addition, they could have a weighted point system (gold 3 points, silver 2 points, bronze, i point). And finally (but there is much more) similar to the per capita approach, GDP could become your denominator with the number of medals the numerator.

Our point? Ranking is arbitrary. It just depends on what you value.

Our Bottom Line: Misleading Rankings

Explaining in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell tells us why ranking is flawed, Gladwell emphasizes that it’s tough to choose appropriate categories. Then though, it gets even trickier with the subcategories. Looking at college ranking, he wonders how to quantify student engagement? Is faculty quality really about degrees and salaries?

Health care, corporate responsibility, national debt, life expectancy…we see ranks everywhere. But when should we be skeptical?

So, with different ranking reflecting success, we could wind up with Nauru at the top of one of our lists.

My sources and more: Thanks to the NY Times for inspiring look at Olympic ranking criteria. Next, for a longer list of ranking criteria this website covered it all. And finally, although the Gladwell New Yorker article is from 2011, it is still valid.