How the Olympics Should Have Been Scored

The olympics is not just a series of competitions, but in actuality is one large competition with a series of events. Each event is then scored and the top three places in each event award one point to the team (or country) that they represent. In laymans terms this is the Medal Count. Currently each medal is worth the exact same as every other medal. A bronze counts as the exact same as a gold. These seems unintuitive to the greater goal of having scoring in general. Coming in first place is regarded as better than second place and certainly more so than coming in third. Instead of simply counting medals I propose that the IOC adopt a Borda Count method of scoring. That is that they assign points based on each medal and then add up the total points to determine which country comes out on top. 3 for gold, 2 for silver and 1 for bronze. Here is a breakdown of the top 10 nations of the most recent Olympics when ranked under my proposed method - with their previous ranks in parenthesis.

1. US - 70pts (1)
2. Ger - 63 pts (2)
3. Can - 60pts (3)
4. Nor - 49 pts (4)
5. Kor - 32pts (7)
   
6. At - 30 pts (5)
7. Rus - 26pts (6)
8. Chi - 23pts (8)
9. Swe - 23pts (8)
10. France - 18pts (10)

Now there isnt much of a change, unless your Korea in which case you move up too ranks into the top 5, but it does make it a much closer affair than before. Canada is potentially 1 medal out of 2nd place instead of 4. Essentially it places more of an emphasis on winning over simply placing. Now part of this is because I am Canadian and yes Canada won more gold medals than any other country, but why should the US sit on top simply because they won twice as many Bronze medals as any other country. A bronze should not be valued the same as a gold simply because it is not as valuable. If you ask any athlete what they prefer to win, bronze or gold, only a fool would say bronze. So why must the IOC consider them to be equals when no one else does?