Have a look at these:
Now take a look at these:
See anything different?
The IOC uses gold medals to determine the medal count winner. Silver and bronze are only brought in as tiebreakers. But most American media outlets rank by overall medals, with golds being used to break ties.
Why, you may ask? The answer should be obvious, really. Uncle Sam can’t bear the shame of coming in 4th place. It’s bad enough that it didn’t “win” the Olympics, but to finish behind Norway? Canada, maybe, but Norway, preposterous! So that do they do, they just change the yardstick everybody else uses. 2+2=lemon. USA! USA! USA!