Who’s Winning the Olympics?
If you’re anything like me, you have been watching the Olympics pretty much nonstop since it started. So far, my favorite part has been watching Oscar Pistorius competing. So inspiring.
One thing that’s always bothered me is the running ‘Medal Count’ that you can find basically everywhere. NBC closes it’s coverage every night with it. Google gives you updated tables if you search for it, embedded right in the top of your results. Sure, China has 34 gold medals right now, and the United States has 30, but which is more impressive? After all, China has more than four times the population of the US. And Cyprus doesn’t have any gold medals, only a silver, but with a population at just over 838,897 people, or about 1/1606th of China’s population, is that significant?
To me, the medal count is somewhat against the ‘Olympic Spirit’ anyway, but even more so because the playing field isn’t really level for all the countries. So I took a few minutes to try to even it out a bit, just for kicks. Simply enough, I took the total number of medals for each country, and divided it by population of the country in millions, giving a ‘Medals per Million’ comparison for all the countries.
One thing to note is that a bronze medal is considered just as valuable as a gold medal. The justification for this is that we can make a relatively safe assumption that we are watching the absolute best athletes in each of their sports, and in a world of over seven billion people, the three best athletes in any individual sport would be the top 0.0000000429%. There just isn’t that much difference in the top three to justify an preference given to any medal color.
So, here it is: Who’s winning the Olympics? (Updated August 7th, 2012)
| Rank | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | Population | Medals/Million |
| 1 | Grenada | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 105,000 | 9.5238 |
| 2 | New Zealand | 3 | 1 | 5 | 9 | 4,434,310 | 2.0296 |
| 3 | Slovenia | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 2,057,870 | 1.9438 |
| 4 | Estonia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1,294,236 | 1.5453 |
| 5 | Jamaica | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 2,705,827 | 1.4783 |
| 6 | Denmark | 2 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 5,584,758 | 1.4325 |
| 7 | Cyprus | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 838,897 | 1.1920 |
| 8 | Qatar | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1,699,435 | 1.1769 |
| 9 | Australia | 4 | 12 | 9 | 25 | 22,689,714 | 1.1018 |
| 10 | Armenia | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3,268,500 | 0.9179 |
| 11 | Hungary | 4 | 2 | 3 | 9 | 9,962,000 | 0.9034 |
| 12 | Belarus | 3 | 2 | 3 | 8 | 9,458,500 | 0.8458 |
| 13 | Netherlands | 5 | 3 | 6 | 14 | 16,736,075 | 0.8365 |
| 14 | Great Britain | 22 | 13 | 13 | 48 | 62,262,000 | 0.7709 |
| 15 | Trinidad and Tobago | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1,317,714 | 0.7589 |
| 16 | Sweden | 1 | 3 | 3 | 7 | 9,495,113 | 0.7372 |
| 17 | Slovakia | 0 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 5,445,324 | 0.7346 |
| 18 | Mongolia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2,844,000 | 0.7032 |
| 19 | Croatia | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 4,290,612 | 0.6992 |
| 20 | Georgia | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4,497,600 | 0.6670 |
| 21 | Lithuania | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3,187,700 | 0.6274 |
| 22 | Cuba | 3 | 3 | 1 | 7 | 11,247,925 | 0.6223 |
| 23 | Moldova | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 3,559,500 | 0.5619 |
| 24 | Czech Republic | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 10,504,203 | 0.4760 |
| 25 | Korea | 12 | 5 | 6 | 23 | 48,580,000 | 0.4734 |
| 26 | Romania | 2 | 5 | 2 | 9 | 19,042,936 | 0.4726 |
| 27 | France | 8 | 9 | 11 | 28 | 65,350,000 | 0.4285 |
| 28 | Kazakhstan | 6 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 16,734,000 | 0.4183 |
| 29 | Norway | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5,027,200 | 0.3978 |
| 30 | Singapore | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 5,183,700 | 0.3858 |
| 31 | Russia | 10 | 18 | 20 | 48 | 143,117,000 | 0.3354 |
| 32 | Germany | 6 | 14 | 7 | 27 | 81,859,000 | 0.3298 |
| 33 | Azerbaijan | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 9,235,100 | 0.3248 |
| 34 | Canada | 1 | 3 | 7 | 11 | 34,877,500 | 0.3154 |
| 35 | Serbia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 7,120,666 | 0.2809 |
| 36 | Italy | 7 | 6 | 4 | 17 | 60,813,326 | 0.2795 |
| 37 | Belgium | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 10,951,266 | 0.2739 |
| 38 | Puerto Rico | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3,725,789 | 0.2684 |
| 39 | Switzerland | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 7,952,600 | 0.2515 |
| 40 | Japan | 2 | 13 | 14 | 29 | 127,530,000 | 0.2274 |
| 41 | United States | 30 | 19 | 21 | 70 | 314,041,000 | 0.2229 |
| 42 | Dominican Republic | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 9,445,281 | 0.2117 |
| 43 | Poland | 2 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 38,501,000 | 0.2078 |
| 44 | DPR Korea | 4 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 24,544,000 | 0.2037 |
| 45 | Ukraine | 3 | 0 | 6 | 9 | 45,589,171 | 0.1974 |
| 46 | Tunisia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 10,673,800 | 0.1874 |
| 47 | Greece | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 10,787,690 | 0.1854 |
| 48 | Finland | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5,413,830 | 0.1847 |
| 49 | Hong Kong, China | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 7,103,700 | 0.1408 |
| 50 | Spain | 1 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 46,185,697 | 0.1299 |
| 51 | Kenya | 1 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 42,749,000 | 0.1170 |
| 52 | Iran | 4 | 3 | 1 | 8 | 75,149,669 | 0.1065 |
| 53 | Colombia | 0 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 46,634,000 | 0.0858 |
| 54 | South Africa | 3 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 50,586,757 | 0.0791 |
| 55 | Guatemala | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 14,713,763 | 0.0680 |
| 56 | China | 34 | 21 | 18 | 73 | 1,347,350,000 | 0.0542 |
| 57 | Ethiopia | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 84,320,987 | 0.0474 |
| 58 | Mexico | 0 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 112,336,538 | 0.0445 |
| 59 | Chinese Taipei | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 23,261,747 | 0.0430 |
| 60 | Brazil | 2 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 192,376,496 | 0.0416 |
| 61 | Venezuela | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 27,150,095 | 0.0368 |
| 62 | Saudi Arabia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 27,855,153 | 0.0359 |
| 63 | Malaysia | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 28,334,135 | 0.0353 |
| 64 | Uzbekistan | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 29,123,400 | 0.0343 |
| 65 | Morocco | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 32,633,100 | 0.0306 |
| 66 | Algeria | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 37,100,000 | 0.0270 |
| 67 | Argentina | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 40,117,096 | 0.0249 |
| 68 | Egypt | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 82,458,000 | 0.0243 |
| 69 | Thailand | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 65,479,453 | 0.0153 |
| 70 | Turkey | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 74,724,269 | 0.0134 |
| 71 | Indonesia | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 237,641,326 | 0.0084 |
| 72 | India | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1,210,193,422 | 0.0025 |
So, there you go. Grenada’s one gold medal by Kirani James, in relation to the population of each countries population, if far more significant than even the next closest country, New Zealand’s, 9 total medals. Way to go, Kirani!
Anyway, I thought it was interesting, and perhaps you will, too. Enjoy.