The crazy medal table reform that could shake up Olympic standings

Thomas Pesquet is a big picture guy, and the French astronaut showed us that once again with his proposed new Olympic medal table set up. The aerospace engineer proposed the revolutionary idea on his social media pages on Sunday.

In it, Pesquet presented "a very serious reform of the Olympic Games", which he has been thinking about for "a very long time".

His theory is simple: "I propose that the number of medals be proportional to the number of people on the field. For individual sports, we count one gold medal, but if we win in basketball, we count five gold medals, in rugby, there are seven gold medals and in football, eleven gold medals."

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Why should it be weighted in this way? "In this way, team sports, which are very important on a global scale, particularly football which is the world sport, would be a little more recognized for their true value," the astronaut believes.

Thomas Pesquet argued using the example of swimming: "That there are 37 gold medals for swimming is very good, we love swimming, but 37 for swimming and only one in football, That doesn’t seem right to me."

This measure, if applied, would greatly benefit team sports nations including his home country.

Indeed, Les Blues are usually outsiders or favourites in many team sports including football, volleyball, handball, basketball, 3x3 basketball and rugby 7s.

This "revolution" would also highlight relays and team events in individual sports, such as team triathlon, team table tennis, relays in athletics or swimming, etc.

Obviously, this initiative was not to everyone's taste and social media users mocked Pesquet in the comments: "They are going to send you back into space for six months", one X user stated.

With the USA – also a strong team sports country at the Olympics – in top place already, Pesquet's proposal would probably not change the overall winner, but the likes of Australia and China, in third and second place respectively, might be a lot further down in the rankings under this system.

What do you think? Should anything change in the way medals are counted?

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