In honor of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games currently being held in Rio, Brazil, I decided to create a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet template for the medal count as I did for the 2014 Winter Olympics and 2012 Summer Olympics. There are two primary methods most websites appear to be ranking the 2016 medal count. Most sites rank countries by the total number of Olympic medals won. Other sites, like the International Olympic Committee (or IOC) rank countries by their gold medal count. And others rank by other factors like per capita or GDP.
If you rank by gold medals countries like Great Britain and China look really good. On the other hand, Japan has 26 medals, ranking fifth overall, but only 27% are gold medals. Therefore, I’ve devised my own ranking system to give each Olympic medal a weight where the silver is worth half a gold medal and a bronze is worth only a quarter of the gold. Based on this new scoring system, the Olympic results suddenly become quite interesting.
Weighted Olympic Medal Count 2016
Pictured below is a bar chart showing all medals won for the top 30 countries plus Michael Phelps (as of the time of this posting on 8-15-16). The bar chart is created in Excel by highlighting the data then going to Insert>Bar>Stacked Bar chart. Change the colors of the bars by right clicking on them then use the drop down menu to select the data you want to change.
Looking at the new Olympic medal ranking systems yields some interesting results. The top four countries actually remain in the same order but Japan drops from fifth to seventh. Spain jumps up seven spots while Colombia jumps up five places. The biggest drop is by Czech Republic, falling 11 places because 5 of their 6 medals are bronze. Download the spreadsheet and see for yourself.
Oh, and if he were a country he’d rank 21st in total medals and in my weighted Olympic medal count he jumps as high as 12th overall because Michael Phelps' medal count at these Olympics Games is five gold and one silver.
I’ve shared my Olympic Medal Count spreadsheet and listed out the Olympic medals by country (as of the morning of August 15th - I will try to keep this updated but no promises!). How would you weight each medal against the others? Comment below and share any of your Olympic medal rating systems!
