Olympics Medals: Weighing Gold, Silver & Bronze

Despite disappointing losses by USA's track teams, women's softball, and women's water polo (well let's face it...was anybody really disappointed?), the US still leads in the overall medal count even while China continues to dominate the gold medal race. Our recent entry about Olympic medals was met with a bit of debate among both the readers and within our family and friends about the importance of gold vs total medals, so we thought it might be good to expound upon a few ideas and points.

Weighing the Medals

The fact that the IOC has refused to implement a medal ranking system should be a clear sign that doing so would be difficult and probably wrong. This, however, does not stop people from trying. Here are a few of the ideas I've seen and heard about weighing medals:

1. Numerical Values: In this scenario, each medal carries a numerical value and all values are added together. For example: gold=10 points, silver=5 points, and bronze=1 point. This is probably the simplist and most common idea floating around, and yet its simpliticy is what makes it difficult for me to swallow.
2. Only Gold: Here people believe that only gold medals count because all other medals are just consolation prizes. This view, not surprisingly, is usually favored by the country with the most gold medals. This year that happens to be China. I have a big problem with this idea, but I'll get more into that later.
3. Medals adjusted by National GDP: Because many developed nations are able to pour more money into their athletes than 3rd world countries, some people suggest adjusting the medal winnings according to how economically rich or poor the competing nation is. This means that Jamaica's track medals would weigh more than America's track medals. My problem with this view is that many of Jamaica's (and other country's) athletes are trained in the US and only compete for their home country during the Olympics - not quite fair, don't you think?
4. Medals adjusted by Population: This idea is similar to number 3 and wouldn't quite work for the same reason mentioned above. To put it in perspective, though, this type of system would put Australia (5 total medals) as the leader while the US would be 40th place and China 73rd (thanks to its 1.3 billion population). This idea seems to be more fair but still has its share of problems and headaches.
   
5. Total Medal Count: This, of course, is the favorite view among Americans. It's flaw is its inability to show the importance of winning the gold medal while its strength is its ability to display the number of high caliber athletes each nation possesses (again, this favors the US).

It sounds nice, but you just can't do it...

Considering all the options above, and even if some math whiz tried to create some formula to take into consideration all these factors, I still don't think weighing medals is feasible. Here's my reasoning:

• My wife made a good point to me the other day - gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded to show that on this day, such-and-such athlete was the best, but on any other day these other two might have beat him or her. Maybe if the weather was different, if one athlete wasn't sick, or if another just wasn't having an off day, things might have been different. Think about Phelp's .01 second win in the butterfly race...on another day at another race he might have been beaten.
• Each country favors the math which makes them look better, so no medal ranking system could be internationally accepted. This can also be good, however, because when countries favor the system which favors them, they walk away happy. If China is happy with its gold medals and America with its total medals, why should we disrupt the happiness?
  
• We're already ranking people in sports games and races, some of which last less than 20 seconds...why must we make winning medals the 29th Olympic sport?

So How much to do the Medals actually weigh (and cost)?

As a side note I thought I'd answer the literal question of how much the medals weigh. Contrary to popular belief, gold medals are not pure gold. According to Olympic requirements, gold and silver medals must be made of 92.5% silver, with the "gold" medals covered in 6 grams of gold. Each medal might slightly vary in size, but its safe to do some math and average their weight at 130 grams.

As for the price of a gold medal, well...it's tricky because the price of gold fluctuates, but its safe to assume that the 6 grams of gold is worth about $160 while the silver is worth around $60. Beijing's medals also throw in a bit of jade (I don't know where), which depending on the quality could add another $30. This puts our grand total at $250 for a gold medal.

Not too shabby, although I'm sure you won't find a gold medal on eBay for that price!

**Update 8/28** Oops, I was wrong. Reports now show that Beijing spent an average of $393 per gold medal, a rise in price from Athens of nearly 200%.

As for the jade, well, I think I might have been hasty with my cost estimate. Since it isn't sold on the commodities market, it's hard to nail down a price, but $30 would be quite low. A few friends here in China have told me that such jade would cost the average buyer a couple hundred dollars. I'm not sure what to believe, but I do know that these medals are pretty expensive!