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Update: The REAL Olympic medal count

Earlier this week, Fourth-Place Medal created our version of the Olympic medal count, which ignores results from judged sports in order to provide an unbiased look into the total medal tallies of the countries. (For a more detailed explanation, check out the original post.) With just three days left in the Beijing Games, we thought it would be a good time to update the standings. First, though, some points of clarification:1) The reason the United States and China are the only countries listed is because they're the two countires competing for the overall medal lead.2) This tabulation is not meant to suggest that every medal won in a judged sport is tainted. For every Cheng Fei (the Chinese gymnast who inexplicably received a bronze medal in the vault despite landing on her knees) there is a Guo Jingjing (the flawless two-time gold medalist diver who was a clear winner in her events). 3) As Joel Achenbach pointed out in an article in today's Washington Post, almost all sports are subject to types of judging errors -- baseball relies on umpires to call balls and strikes, soccer referees influence the game with their penalties, etc. The difference is, the officials in those sports exist to control the game, not to decide it.4) The events thrown out of our medal tally are: diving, equestrian, gymnastics, judo, synchronized swimming, taekwondo, trampoline and wrestlingFor the first time in our tabulation, the United States has passed China in gold medals. The Chinese have a staggering 23 golds in judged events, exactly half of their regular total. The United States has just four golds in such sports. In total, China has earned 35 medals in sports with judges, while the U.S. has 19.

Van der Weijden wins 10K swimming race

BEIXIAOYING TOWN, China (AP)—Dutch swimmer Maarten van der Weijden already fought back from leukemia. An open water fight hardly compared.
Oblivious to the kicking, slapping and pushing going on between the race favorites, the 6-foot-9 (2.05-meter) van der Weijden won the inaugural Olympic men’s 10-kilometer open water marathon under a steady rain Thursday.
“The leukemia taught me to think step by step,” van der Weijden said. “When you’re laying in the hospital bed and feeling so much pain and feeling so tired, you don’t want to think about next week or next month, you’re only thinking about the next hour.”
Van der Weijden was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001, came back in 2003 and began swimming faster than before.
“You lay in your bed and just wait,” he added. “It’s almost the same strategy I’ve used here—to stay in the pack, to be patient, and stay easy just waiting for your chance.”
Gradually moving up to the front throughout the race, van der Weijden won a three-way sprint by taking a more direct line to the finish, skirting just inside the final red buoy to grab gold.
ADVERTISEMENT David Davies of Britain and Thomas Lurz of Germany drifted to the outside at the finish and settled for silver and bronze.
Van der Weijden reached up to slap the yellow touchpad in 1 hour, 51 minutes, 51.6 seconds. Davies was 1.5 seconds behind and Lurz finished 2.0 seconds back.
Pre-race favorite Vladimir Dyatchin of Russia, who won the last two world titles in this event, was disqualified for pushing an opponent under water at the final watering station. He had already been warned and received a red card.
“I struggled in the water with a lot of athletes around me,” Dyatchin said.
Davies was at or near the lead from start to finish on the 6.2-mile course and opened up a five or six body-length lead with a few hundred meters (yards) remaining. He couldn’t hold it, though.
“It’s going to take a while for it to sink in. At the last bit, I didn’t know what was going on,” said Davies, who finished sixth in the 1,500-meter event inside the Water Cube on Sunday. “I need to learn to swim straight.”
Davies also struggled with the physical aspects of the race.
“My goggle was in my eye, I had a foot in my eye and got a slapped face,” he said. “Maybe I’m too much of a nice guy. I need to be more rough.”
After the race, Davies received medical attention.
“I just wanted to lie down and have a sleep, but before I knew it I was on a stretcher,” he said.
Lurz won the world title in this event in 2004 and 2006, and was not surprised by the physicality.
“It always is in the 10K,” he said. “It makes the sport different compared to the pool.”
Mark Warkentin, the only American in the race, finished eighth.
“I got a serious elbow to the back of the shoulder blade and it’s really hurting me right now,” Warkentin said. “It’s as enjoyable as a painful two hours can be.”
Warkentin, who specializes in the 25 km, was boxed into a group with Van der Weijden with about 2 km (a little more than 1 mile) to go.
Netherland's Maarten van d…
AFP - Aug 21, 2:24 am EDT “At that particular moment, there was nowhere to go. He looked over at me and he smiled.” Warkentin said. “He’s hysterical. I would have been happier if I would have won. But aside from me, there’s nobody I’m more happy for.
“He’s a great guy. He’s tough. He’s the kind of guy you don’t want to mess with because you’re going to end up on the bad side just because of his size. You’ve got to kind of maneuver around him. He’s like a ship and all the rest of us are yachts. We’re just trying to find our way around that big old vessel.”
Despite the rain, the race was held in ideal swimming conditions at Shunyi Rowing-Canoeing Park. The 25 competitors swam four laps each around the artificial body of water, with coaches riding close by along the shore on bicycles.
After the win, van der Weijden raised his arms in the air and pumped his fists as he walked around the dock. He was hoisted on the shoulders of his teammates and pointed a finger toward to sky to show he was No. 1.
“Because of the treatment I got, the stem cell transplants, I had the luck to recover,” van der Weijden said. “The stem cell transplants are because of research worldwide for cancer. So everyone who donates money, donated money in the past, I’m grateful too or otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

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photos betjing,