Dear Sir:
The Pan American Games are an offshoot of the Olympic Games, which began as competition among individual athletes but are now viewed as a competition among nations, representing the increasing nationalism that many people deplore.
The Reporter reflects this by listing, on the front page of its October 22-28 issue, the eight countries whose athletes had so far garnered the most medals in the Games, thereby comparing the United States, in first place with 98 medals and 312 million residents, to Cuba, in fourth place with only 28 medals, but only 11 million people. However, if you divide the countries’ populations by the number of medals gleaned to determine how many people each medal represents, the order of places is very different. Cuba is in first place with a medal for each 401,000 residents, the U.S. in seventh with a medal for each 3,200,000.
Rounding the number of residents that each medal won represents, the order of the eight countries listed in the Reporter is: Cuba, 401,000; Canada, 878,000; Venezuela, 1,164,000, Argentina, 2,111,000; Colombia, 2,296,000; Mexico, 3,000,000; U.S., 3,200,000; Brazil, 4,653,000.
This is a much fairer way to compare how the countries’ athletes are doing in winning medals.
Kenneth G. Crosby, San Antonio Tlayacapan