There are lots of reasons not to get sucked in by the medals table, a gimmick and guilty pleasure too often turned into a boast. It excludes too many successful achievements, writes Malcolm Knox. | OPINION Tokyo2020 Olympics2021
, the most elite of sports, as laudable as Hoy’s achievement was in his eighth Games. The medals table tries to impose a collective logic onto random events taking place under a very broad Olympic umbrella. Every sport is a separate team, and many of the Australian “teams” were not even in the same city as one another.
There’s no reason number three is the boss except that this is the way it was once set up, which is all the more reason to avoid getting too worked up about where we are coming. Before the Tokyo Games, the Australian chef de mission, Ian Chesterman, refrained from publicly setting a medals target for the Australian team. It was wise. I’ve been told on good authority that the benchmark the AOC was setting was somewhere around 10 gold medals. It was right not to impose pressure on the athletes, and it’s also right, now, to hold back from gloating about how far the tally has exceeded hopes.
Not only does the medals table set up a bogus competition between nations, but it pits teams against those from past Olympics. Are the Australian teams that went to Rio and London, whose medal hauls were so much lighter than Tokyo, meant to feel inferior? Do they hang their heads in shame if they “only” went to Rio?I understand one pragmatic use of a medals table. It’s when John Coates and his crew go to Canberra and Brisbane to make the case for funding.