Total medals or most golds. Which is more important?

[UrbanLegendMD]

Public warning for an insult towards another poster.

This is a direct violation of the TOS of the forums and you've been here long enough to know that.

Dude, it was a joke.

[Slava]

Public warning for an insult towards another poster.

This is a direct violation of the TOS of the forums and you've been here long enough to know that.

Dude, it was a joke.

Please check PM!

[Gamer_4_life]

Most golds...

[gamer4Life]

Most golds...

Thought I'd reply to someone with the same username.

[CapeCrusader]

As much as I want to say its all about the Gold since Canada holds the most. But I think they're both important, but I would hold gold higher.

[jTF2]

USA wins this battle but just barely IMO and I'm Canadian. A 11 medal difference versus 5 golds is enough to put them over the top because I count overall excellence in athletics slightly more than dominance in a couple of sports. USA lost the summer olympics handily though.

[steaveford]

U.S. media seems to kind of split attention between the two, and the list of teams with a total number of medals. I like to weigh both, but if you have one or the other, I have more gold.

[miltk]

depends on the country. a BIG country, oh,,,say the usa, i prefer to see more medals because we have depth. only 1 of 3 medals are gold, and the best in a given sport can really come from any country. any t&f event, any swimming event, any gymnastics event, almost any event can have a champion from any number of countries...that's the way the world is today. a small country like india or pakistan however, might fully expect to get gold for field hockey, and japan should expect a gold or two in judo. there are a lot of countries that can focus all their resources on one particular event while the usa simply DOESN'T. the only even the usa dominates is swimming.

think of all the events in the olympics and try to list all those events that we should be a LOCK for gold. allison felix,,,men's 4x400,,,what else.

so i think most medals is more important. if there was a choice between 80 total/25 gold and 50 total /35 gold,,,i think the 50/35 is embarrassing for a country as huge as the usa.

[Kaizen]

Might as well see if anyone has a vote on this. I prefer most medals.

[Dry_Fish]

I think gold is better but also in certain sports. A gold in softball is pretty pointless as the U.S. is one of the few countries that plays it. (I think softball is drop now) Sports that are high profile and competitive are what counts.

[gavran]

Most golds divided by the population of the county. It's kind un unfair to compare the total amount of a country with 1.3 billion people and another one with 10 million.