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I enjoy the Olympics without counting medals for each country, but I got into a discussion over this popular pastime with my friend from NZ. He suggested that all medal counts be done on a per capita basis. Is this fair? Should a country with 100 times the population of another county have 100 times the medal expectation? If you assume so, you can clearly see that NZ is kicking butt. Country Pop Gold Silver Bronze Total P/C: Gold Silver Bronze Total Name (millions) count count count count (per billion population) ------- ---------- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- USA 265 36 31 20 87 135 117 75 328 NZ 3.4 3 2 1 6 882 588 294 1764 I will calulate an entry for any other countries you like, as I have access to all the data required. Just let me know which country you want.
28 responses total.
How about Moldova? BTW, I heard "Papa Joe" Chevalier on the radio the other night complaining about the New Zealander ahead of him in line at a convenience store saying to his daughter that there was glass in front of the cashier because "People get shot in this country doing this job, unlike in New Zealand." Truth hurts, "Papa Joe," doesn't it?
Yup. It does hurt. I added Moldova, India, and the top 10 countries in total medals to the table. I also updated the medal counts for USA. (NZ is still at 3,2,1), and sorted by total medals per capita. I can add more countries - just name them. Country Pop Gold Silver Bronze Total P/C: Gold Silver Bronze Total Name (millions) count count count count (per billion population) ------- ---------- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- Australia 18.3 9 9 20 38 492 492 1093 2077 Cuba 10.9 7 7 8 22 642 642 734 2018 NZ 3.4 3 2 1 6 882 588 294 1764 Germany 81 18 16 27 61 222 198 333 753 Canada 28.4 3 10 8 21 106 352 282 739 France 58 15 7 14 36 259 120 241 621 Korea 45 7 13 5 25 156 289 111 556 Italy 58 12 8 11 31 207 138 190 534 Russia 149 26 20 14 60 174 134 93 402 USA 265 42 32 25 99 158 121 94 374 Moldova 4.5 0 0 1 1 0 0 222 222 China 1203 16 22 12 50 13 18 10 42 India 937 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 Kiwis will be disappointed to see that Cuba and especially Australia beat NZ for total medals per capita. NZ still has it for golds per capita, though. At least until we find a small enough country with at least one Gold.
At least we're ahead of Moldova, though. >8)
Hmmm...as I recall, Trinidad & Tobago has a medal, as does the Bahamas.
Re # 2..... The Kiwi performance isn't too bad, but wasn't up to expectations at this end. Without Danyon Loader winning the first ever swimming medal for NZ (and getting two golds to boot), the results wouldn't have looked quite so impressive. And three of the medals went to equestrian events too. Err - is that the rider or the horse who should get the medal, I always wonder? Hmm is horseback stuff the only animal assisted event in the Olympics?
when they decide to have a dog show or dog racing, i am moving to jamacia
I got the final medal counts, but there are an awful lot of countries. I still don't plan on doing them all. However I made sure that I have all of the countries that won at least 3 gold medals, and all of the countries with at least 10 total medals, and all of the countries that you asked for (thus including Trinidad and Tobago, who did pretty well, thanks to their very small population, and the Bahamas, who stole the contest with a single silver medal. NZ disappointed with a mere 5th place showing, but can console themselves with the highest per capita Gold medal tally in the world. Nice going. We can settle for having done better than Great Britain. We came very close to Romania, Ukraine and Russia in per/capita gold medals. Missed 'em though. We'll have to wait until 2000. Country Pop Gold Silver Bronze Total P/C: Gold Silver Bronze Total Name (millions) count count count count (per billion population) ------- ---------- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- Bahamas 0.26 0 1 0 0 0 3846 0 3846 Cuba 10.9 9 8 8 25 826 734 734 2294 Australia 18.3 9 9 23 41 492 492 1257 2240 Hungary 10.3 7 4 10 21 680 388 971 2039 NZ 3.4 3 2 1 6 882 588 294 1764 Bulgaria 8.8 3 7 5 15 341 795 568 1705 Trinidad&Tob 1.3 0 0 2 2 0 0 1538 1538 Belarus 10.4 1 6 8 15 96 577 769 1442 Netherlands 15.5 4 5 10 19 258 323 645 1226 Denmark 5.2 4 1 1 6 769 192 192 1154 Ireland 3.6 3 0 1 4 833 0 278 1111 Czech R. 10.4 4 3 4 11 385 288 385 1048 Switzerland 7.1 4 3 0 7 563 423 0 986 Romania 23.2 4 7 9 20 172 301 388 862 Germany 81 20 18 27 65 247 222 333 802 Greece 10.6 4 4 0 8 377 377 0 755 Canada 28.4 3 10 8 21 106 352 282 739 France 58 15 7 15 37 259 120 259 638 Kazakhstan 17.4 3 4 4 11 172 230 230 632 Italy 58 13 10 12 35 224 172 207 603 Korea 45 7 15 5 27 156 333 111 600 Ukraine 52 9 2 12 23 173 38 231 442 Poland 38.8 7 5 5 17 180 129 129 438 Spain 39.4 5 6 6 17 127 152 152 431 Russia 149 26 21 16 63 174 141 107 423 USA 265 44 32 25 101 166 121 94 381 England 58.3 1 8 6 15 17 137 103 257 Moldova 4.5 0 0 1 1 0 0 222 222 Japan 126 3 6 5 14 24 48 40 111 S. Africa 45.1 3 1 1 5 67 22 22 111 Turkey 63.4 4 1 1 6 63 16 16 95 Brazil 161 3 3 9 15 19 19 56 93 China 1203 16 22 12 50 13 18 10 42 India 937 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1
Well done Steve. And the USA did pretty well too for such a large country. It will be interesting to compare the figures in four years when the home country 'advantage' moves down under. Y'all come!
Saw the Tongan silver medal winner return to Auckland tonite to a hero's welcome ( err - saw via TV, like I 'saw' the Olympics. ) So the burning question must be - How did the Republic on Tonga do (medals per capita) ? (of)
Hmmm. I get all of my data from the official IBM Olympic Web Site, and it shows no entry under the name "Tonga" . Nor does it show Fiji. Do we know what flag this fellow competed under? THere is one silver medal listed as "Country Unknown". If indeed that is Tonga alone, then they would ace out the bermudas by earning 1 medal from a population of .1047 Million. This would be 9551 medals per billion, which would blow everyone else off the map. Of course, I would have to see some substantiation of that award before I would put it in the table. Note that NZ would still reign in the category of gold medals per capita. The population of Tonga is smaller than the population of Ann Arbor (FWIW).
Yep, its's official. Tonga did get a silver in boxing, giving them the highest per capita medal total.
re #10 I'll haave to have words with IBM about missing out Tonga. No excuse. On the other hand, it is all confirmation that thoseof us in the South Pacific - NZ, Tonga, and , err even Australia, are pretty sporty folk? Time to retire to the couch for a while!
I sould be extremely grateful if you could deleteI India from the table. It is irritating to see so many zeroes in a single row. With the population we hace it is a shame we can't win a single gold medal The lone medal came from a Tennis Star
It is not meant as an insult, or to irritate you. I think it would be improper to delete it, though. The issue of India's olympic efforts is a complex one. Yes, your famous tennis player won that medal. I think that is something to be proud of. India has fielded an Olypic team for a long time now, and regularly does not win many medals. I think there are some valid reasons for this, which do not get reflected in such tables. India's relatively poor showing compared to the rest of the world was discussed in a news story I heard on the radio (NPR) before the olypics. I no longer remember well many of the points made, but one I do remember is that the emphasis on sports is not as great in India, as in many other places. This is partially a cultural bias, and there is nothing wrong wth culture. Indians instead tend to spend more time on academic pursuits, and this is very much to their credit. I know that the question of Olympic participation is discussed in India, and I give the country a lot of credit for sending competitiors, whether they win or not. India has a very large population, but a large percentage are too mired in poverty to be able to worry about athletics. If the economic situation improves, and if India is able to make some of this wealth of humanity more productive, there is much to hope for. This table does have the property of making India look especially bad. I posted it so that we would get a slightly different look at the medals, and it shows the USA much more poorly than the conventional count. And in part to humor my friend Bill in NZ.
whoa! That was a good piece of logic. I full y agree with u that over here academics is given more priority than sports. But hre the beaurocratic red tape is such thatany reason we give regarding failures mostly do not hold water. There is a joke in India. Whenever we send a contingent to olympics invariably the no. of officials accompanying the atheletes are always more. Here the athelets ar also shabbily trated. It is difficult to get them motivated just for the flag. Anyway the other thing I am surprised at is, ur knowledge. U seem to know more about India than me. Knowledge is power I guess.
I may have a lot of misinformation, too. Please enlighten me. I isten to the radio a lot. NPR is "National Public Radio" which often does stories on international themes. They are also often criticized for being left-leaning. But leaning to the left in the US is probably very different than leaning to the left in India. I am fascinated by India, and have learned a lot about it because of some friends I made at a software company in Bangalore, and because of the recent influx of Indian users on Grex. We should probably talk about India somewhere else, lilke maybe the world-events conference (j world), and leave this item for rehashing old olympics results, like why New Zealand allowed the Aussie's to beat them in the per capita standings.
New Zealander's blame Aussie succes on the Australian Sports Institute which provides a professional income and also training and other support for many of their sportspeople. Australia is really gearing up for the Sydney Olympics in the year 2000. And their Sports Institute funding has been greatly increased. But they did really well, none the less, at Atlanta. That is hard for a Kiwi to say out loud. We did smash them at rugby this year though. Now that _is_ a gold medal sport for NZ!
So are the Kiwis lobbying to get it into the Olympics? I would watch. There are enough club teams in the US to field a national team, but we'd probably get chewed to peieces by the Kiwi All-Black machine.
re #18 is a topic we should stay away from. I feel strongly that (most) team games should not be in the olympics. Cricket and the various forms of rugby definitely shouldn't be in the olympics and I hope gridiron football and baseball never get there. Most I guess I would relent a little on some of the more non-professional sports. But with a cricket world cup, a rugby world cup, a baseball world series and soccer's world cup - I don't see any reason for them to be in the Olympics too. My opinion, of course. :-)
Actually, I mostly agree with you, Bill. I was being a bit sarcastic. Not entirely, though. I do love olympic soccer, vball, water polo, and especially ice hockey in Winter even though both soccer and hockey have world cup events, too.
The "per capita" look at relative medal strength is very interesting. A more revealing statistic would be relative comparisons of olympic organizations, both in terms of percentage of general populations "participating" and in terms of size of each group. This would consider both the upper limit of participants (total population) and the actual participant groups. Germany with less than 10% of the population of India may in fact have a rate of real participation easily 10 (100?) times that of India, for example. Then again, it only would take one dual citizenship medal winner in a small country to skew the results and highlight the effect of cherry picking participants. Aren't a significant number of the U.S. Men's basketball athletes immigrants? Hmmm... ;) "There are only two kinds of statistics...."
Well, I could easily get the population data to compute the per capita counts, but if you have all the data to analyze it a different way, it's time to break out the spreadsheet.
I think I'll just wait for the WInter Olympics to roll around so I can once again root for "tiny Lichenstien".
I think it is just a little of a year away. I will be ready with the population data and spreadsheet. it should be fun.
(I almost did a country project on Lichenstien, but I couldn't find enough info..=)
Did you look on http://www.news.li/ ?
(I had no idea what the WWW was in 6th grade..=)
Ah, well I hadn't realized your comment referred to 6th grade. That explains it.
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