The Chinese public has recently begun to question its government's and media's emphasis on winning Olympic gold medals while ignoring or castigating silver and bronze medalists.
Indeed, there's something bullying about the Go Gold or Go Home attitude. So, I've sorted the medal charts by percentage of non-gold medals won as one clue to which countries have a healthy middle-of-the-road attitude toward the Olympics, wanting to be competitive without being obsessive about Winning Is the Only Thing. The top three countries in terms of percent of medals won that are not gold are Canada (only one gold out of 16 total medals), Sweden, and Japan. At the bottom of the list is North Korea (four golds out of five). Who would you rather have as a neighbor: Canada or North Korea?
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | % non-Gold | |
| Canada | 1 | 5 | 10 | 16 | 94% |
| Sweden | 1 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 86% |
| Japan | 5 | 14 | 14 | 33 | 85% |
| Spain | 2 | 7 | 2 | 11 | 82% |
| Brazil | 2 | 2 | 7 | 11 | 82% |
| Australia | 6 | 13 | 10 | 29 | 79% |
| Russia | 12 | 21 | 23 | 56 | 79% |
| Romania | 2 | 5 | 2 | 9 | 78% |
| Denmark | 2 | 4 | 3 | 9 | 78% |
| Poland | 2 | 1 | 6 | 9 | 78% |
| Czech Rep, | 2 | 3 | 3 | 8 | 75% |
| Slovenia | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 75% |
| Germany | 10 | 16 | 11 | 37 | 73% |
| France | 8 | 9 | 12 | 29 | 72% |
| Kenya | 2 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 71% |
| Belarus | 3 | 3 | 4 | 10 | 70% |
| New Zealand | 3 | 2 | 5 | 10 | 70% |
| Ukraine | 3 | 1 | 6 | 10 | 70% |
| Netherlands | 5 | 5 | 6 | 16 | 69% |
| Jamaica | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 67% |
| Georgia | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 67% |
| Norway | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 67% |
| Italy | 7 | 6 | 6 | 19 | 63% |
| Cuba | 3 | 3 | 2 | 8 | 63% |
| USA | 39 | 25 | 26 | 90 | 57% |
| Iran | 4 | 4 | 1 | 9 | 56% |
| China | 37 | 24 | 19 | 80 | 54% |
| Korea | 12 | 7 | 6 | 25 | 52% |
| Great Britain | 25 | 13 | 14 | 52 | 52% |
| Croatia | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 50% |
| Ethiopia | 2 | 2 | 4 | 50% | |
| Hungary | 8 | 4 | 3 | 15 | 47% |
| South Africa | 3 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 40% |
| Kazakhstan | 6 | 3 | 9 | 33% | |
| Switzerland | 2 | 1 | 3 | 33% | |
| DPR Korea | 4 | 1 | 5 | 20% |
