Perhaps you thought the Chinese were leading the Olympics medal table – maybe using erroneous information supplied by the official Olympics website, and copied slavishly by major media outlets such as the BBC:
However within the US it’s a different story, with Team America storming towards another Olympics victory:
How come the difference? The official table ranks countries by gold medals won (silver and bronzes are used for ties). The US version, in contrast, ranks by total medals – ensuring the greatest nation on God’s earth takes its proper position ahead of the rest of us.
[Question: Would it be churlish of me to point out that this is an innovation? That back in 2004, when the US won most golds, it used the same table as the rest of the world? Answer: Yes. Most definitely.]
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David Steven is a senior fellow at the UN Foundation and at New York University, where he founded the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a multi-stakeholder partnership to deliver the SDG targets for preventing all forms of violence, strengthening governance, and promoting justice and inclusion. He was lead author for the ministerial Task Force on Justice for All and senior external adviser for the UN-World Bank flagship study on prevention, Pathways for Peace. He is a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Risk Pivot: Great Powers, International Security, and the Energy Revolution (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). In 2001, he helped develop and launch the UK’s network of climate diplomats. David lives in and works from Pisa, Italy.
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