America refuses to accept defeat in Olympic medal count

'China celebrated achieving its ultimate aim of heading the Olympic medals table for the first time. Unless you are in America, where you will discover that Team USA remain the force in world sport.

The race for the Olympic title is measured in medals, it just depends on which medals you consult. The IOC issues its league table based on the number of golds won, which gives China the honours, but then admits that there is no official system in place to decide who is top dog. Whereas the American public is reading tables counting the total number of medals, including silver and bronze, won at the Games. On that measure, the US keep the whip hand over the home nation.' Timesonline
so America were looking at table totally different to what the rest of the world were seeing...so in their eyes they won....

'Whatever way they count, the fact remains that Beijing was the first time in 72 years that the US have not headed the gold-medal standings - and it has clearly hurt, never more so than on the track, where US officials were talking up the team's performance while quietly launching an internal inquiry into what went wrong.

The answer was Usain Bolt, of course, the phenomenon who ended America's grip on the 100 metres. Jamaica blasted the US off the podium at Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium and claimed dominance of the high-speed events for men and women. Six golds and a total of 11 medals was an impressive performance from a country with a population of three million, a fifth of the number of residents of Beijing.'

	Country				Total
1	CHN	51	21	28	100
2	USA	36	38	36	110
3	RUS	23	21	28	72
4	GBR	19	13	15	47
5	GER	16	10	15	41
6	AUS	14	15	17	46
7	KOR	13	10	8	31
8	JPN	9	6	10	25
9	ITA	8	10	10	28
10	FRA	7	16	17	40