Are all gold medals equal?

An actual-size shot of how the medals might look if I was running the Games?                                      Pic: london2012.com

The day before the Olympic opening ceremony I had the following conversation with my highly-opinionated film critic friend Patrick:

Me: “If you were Bradley Wiggins would you rather win the Tour de France or win a gold medal?”

Patrick: “Well, he has both so…”

Me: “Yeah, but if you had to choose.”

Patrick: “Tour de France, no question. It’s the pinnacle of cycling.”

Me: “I think I’d rather have the gold medal but that’s probably because I don’t care that much about cycling.”

Patrick: “Yeah, you’re an idiot.”

Once my damaged self-esteem had recovered, it led me to thinking about the seemingly ever growing number of sports for which the Olympic Games is no longer the pinnacle. What’s more, I couldn’t help but feel that, if the Games aren’t the pinnacle of a certain sport, it somewhat devalues winning the gold medal in that sport.

How can we reflect this? My initial reaction was that “The Pinnacle” rule should be the primary criteria for making decisions about which sports featured at future Games. But I soon realised that a large part of the appeal of the Olympics is the sheer diversity of the sports (and athletes) competing in one place at one time. I may not think a men’s football gold medal is worth the same as the gold for the 100m sprint but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the idea of Michael Phelps, Tyson Gay and LeBron James all hanging out in the Athlete’s Village or swapping stories of their conquests (sporting and, ahem, extracurricular) as they walk around the Olympic Stadium at the closing ceremony (which totally happens by the way!). But I’m adamant that it should be reflected in some way.

After quite a lot of thought, I decided the only fair way to acknowledge the relative value of an event’s gold medal was by size and weight. If an event is devalued because it’s not the pinnacle of that sport, then the medal, as a representation of achievement should suffer the same fate.

The medals at London 2012 weigh approximately 400g but there really needs to be at least two smaller sizes than that.

Here’s the definitive list of events that would qualify for 100g gold medals if I was running the Olympics:

As a general rule any team sport should fall into this category. Call me a purist but there’s something about the Olympic motto ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’ that just translates better in individual sports. This is even more the case when the sport in question has a showcase event of its own already.

The prime offender here is men’s football, which, in many ways, barely warrants a medal at all. Could we not just keep men’s Olympic football as a permanent exhibition sport? Whilst I’m sure many footballers consider winning a gold medal a great honour, it is far from the pinnacle of the sport. The greatest footballers are, and always will be, judged on their performances at World Cups and, to a lesser extent, in the Champions League. The bizarre compromise with FIFA that sees the majority of players competing aged under 23 only serves to give the whole tournament even more of a development feel. ‘Hey, come watch some Olympic football – you might see the stars of tomorrow.’ These guys haven’t trained for four or eight years solely for the chance to compete at these Games. For many of them it’s just another notch on the bedpost of a career that will find its ultimate fulfilment elsewhere. As much as I’ve enjoyed getting my first close up look at Neymar, Lucas Moura, Oscar etc. during these Games, the level of competition has frankly been pretty disappointing and many of the matches have been played out at low intensity in front of mediocre crowds. I’m sorry guys, but the 100g gold is the most you deserve.

The other sports that sit in this category are women’s football (at least there are no age limits), basketball (rumoured to be considering implementing age limits to give greater weight to their own World Cup), tennis (it may be at Wimbledon, but the players would still rather win actual Wimbledon), handball (I remain unconvinced by Bill Simmons’ new found appreciation), hockey, volleyball, waterpolo, and, on the basis of my conversation with Patrick, road cycling.

One level up from that you have the 200g gold medal events:

Once you’ve got the traditional team sports out of the way there are still a number of events where athletes rely on someone and/or something else. Don’t get me wrong, I love team sports and recognise that there is often greater skill involved in coordinating multiple people than just a single person, but when it comes to the Olympics I’m all about the primacy of individual achievement. A friend of mine recently asked, “Not being a dick or anything but is equestrian even a sport? If anything, the horse should get the medal.” I’m not sure I entirely agree, but the greatest equestrian in the world couldn’t compete at the Games without a horse. The involvement of the horse, not to mention many of the events being competed for as a team, sees equestrian fall into the category of the 200g gold.

Other sports that fall into this category are anything synchronised (diving, swimming, trampolining), table tennis and badminton doubles, all the relay events in both swimming and athletics, and beach volleyball.

Also anything that requires basically no movement falls into this category. Sorry shooting, archery and chess (oh wait, not an Olympic sport yet?).

I would reluctantly also put boxing in this category because, despite Olympic boxing’s great appeal and it being a sport where the Olympic committee seem to have got the rules on professionals competing right, it is also very difficult to argue that, for many boxers, the Olympics isn’t just a checkpoint on their way to bigger and better things.

Finally, as much as it saddens me to say it there are some sports that simply fail to capture the imagination in the way that a true Olympic sport should. I know there will be fans of the sport out there that will argue until their blue in the face that it’s not the case, but taekwondo, wrestling, sailing and (outside of Asia) the table tennis and badminton singles will never capture the imagination of the average punter in the same way as swimming does, albeit only every four years.

Which brings me to the 400g gold medal events, the pure events of the Olympics, the sports that have you turning on the TV knowing nothing about the event and somehow getting swept away in the emotion of it all and choking up as an unheard-of Lithuanian claims gold in the 100m breaststroke.

These are the sports that typify the Olympic spirit, not just in the sense of ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’ but also in the sense of mutual reinforcement. The sport is made better by the Olympics (can anyone honestly say they’ve sat up through the night to watch an athletics World Champs?), but the Olympics is made what it is by the sport. I can imagine an Olympics without football, without archery, and just about without boxing. But an Olympics without swimming or athletics is heresy. It simply wouldn’t be the Olympics. Whilst great Olympic teams do sometimes stick in the collective consciousness, particularly in the smaller countries where medals are rare (Hungary in waterpolo for example, or,to a lesser extent, USA’s basketball Dream Team in 1992) our Olympic heroes typically come from the 400g medal sports.

No Olympic Games has truly started until the first medals are won in the pool and London 2012 was no different. Yet the Games don’t feel like they’re in full fling until the athletics gets started a week later. Some of the sneaky good viewing from any Olympics comes in both the weightlifting and the judo. And you have to admire the versatility of both the triathletes and those competing in the modern pentathlon (even if the latter rarely gets the television coverage it deserves – if they put this on outside of the Olympics I’d watch it – and that’s before you exploit its potential to make a great reality TV show). Despite both the teamwork and question marks that remain over how much it means to the athletes track cycling remains an important part of any Games and perhaps I’m showing my New Zealand bias but you can’t take a 400g medal away from the rowers.

Like I say, I don’t have a particular agenda when it comes to seeing sports added or taken away from the Games (except golf which should not be allowed under any circumstances). The Olympics remains the spectacle it is because of the smorgasbord of events on offer. But I do think that this new scheme would give literal weight to something most of us already accept: Not all Olympic medals are created equal.