Day 11 Standings -- with OES

The Olympic Efficiency Score ("OES") for the United States continues to drift downward, getting ever closer to the 0.428 that we posted in 2008. We are now three medals behind China -- we won seven medals today, but they won nine. Meanwhile, the OES for Great Britain and Russia both continue to rise as they are locked in an epic battle for third place in total medals. In terms of total medals, the British are simply crushing their traditional rivals: France, Australia, and Germany.

By the way, you may wonder where China gets all of their medals. Well, they're all over the place. Here is the breakdown of their medal count so far:

Archery: 2
Athletics (Track and Field): 3
Badminton: 8
Cycling: 3
Diving: 8
Fencing: 3
Gymnastics: 8
Judo: 2
Rowing: 1
Sailing: 1
Shooting: 7
Swimming: 10
Synchronized Swimming: 1
Table Tennis: 5
Trampoline: 4
Weightlifting: 7

Our medals are much more concentrated. Here's where our medals came from:

Archery: 1
Athletics (Track and Field): 13
Cycling: 3
Diving: 3
Fencing: 1
Gymnastics: 6
Judo: 2
Rowing: 3
Shooting: 4
Swimming: 30
Tennis: 4

So far, we've only beaten the Chinese in four sports: swimming (30-10), rowing (3-1), tennis (4-0), and track and field (13-3).

They've beaten us in archery (1-2), diving (3-8), fencing (1-3), gymnastics (6-8), sailing (0-1), shooting (4-7), and synchronized swimming (0-1). But those sports are all pretty close, and are not enough to overcome our advantages in swimming and track. We're even in cycling (3-3) and judo (2-2).

So why is China ahead of us? Here's the key factor: they have 8 badminton medals, 5 table tennis medals, 4 trampoline medals, and 7 weightlifting medals -- a total of 24 medals in those four sports to zero for the United States.

1. China: 73 total medals (34G/21S/18B) -- OES of 1.459
2. United States: 70 (30/19/21) -- OES of 0.440
T3. Russia: 48 (10/18/20) -- OES of 4.274
T3. Great Britain: 48 (22/13/13) -- OES of 1.713
5. Japan: 29 (2/13/14) -- OES of 0.527
6. France: 28 (8/9/11) -- OES of 1.044
7. Germany: 27 (6/14/7) -- OES of 0.749
8. Australia: 25 (4/12/9) -- OES of 2.329
9. S. Korea: 23 (12/5/6) -- OES of 1.825
10. Italy: 17 (7/6/4) -- OES of 0.806