Editorial: Champs will be heroes

Is there any relevance in the population-based medal table for the Olympics?

It makes us feel a less like we're getting kicked all over the Games by the big players, such as USA, China and Great Britain. But does it mean anything?

Let's look at what we win - rowing, equestrian events, and cycling. Most of us ride a bike on occasion, but rowing and equestrian are minor sports.

Shouldn't we then be comparing how many medals we won with how many people take part in those particular sports, rather than the particular population? Or, should we tally up the number of equestrian medals per country and divide them by the number of horses each country has?

What about the amount of money spent on elite sportspeople? If we had a table based on how much each country has supported the careers of its Olympians, that may be a fairer indication.

Perhaps, if we really wanted to level the playing field, we should have a medal table where a nation's gross domestic product was divided by its medal tally.

We may be small, but we're better off than many of the nations at the Olympics, and we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we're lucky that the majority of us are not too poor to take part in sport.

I wish we could get over medal tallies altogether. It seems particularly un-Olympic to focus on the dash to rack up more medals - and particularly the comparisons with our closest friends, Australia. Especially when, let's face it, they'll beat us in the end.

It's not so bad to know that we will dominate the world in one or two events, and can expect a strong showing in a few others. And we will have few enough Olympic champions that they will all come home treated like the heroes they deserve to be.