Don’t you think the most important column may not be the one you sort by? Most data will have an ID or label (country name in this case) that differentiates the row and gives it meaning. Putting this column last obscures the meaning of the rows.
I don't think the most important column necessarily has to be on the left - in fact these tables already often have the rank to the left of the country name. There are many other ways to convey column importance, such as bolding the values.
If anything the ranking reinforces the idea that a given country is in a given position which is the overall structure and intent of the data (in my view). I’m not likely to look at the table to extract the fact that “7 gold medals is 17th place.” I’m going to see that “country X is 17th place.”
-8 | 1 | Tiger Woods | [other columns]
1 | -8 | Tiger Woods | [other columns]