Who Won the Olympics?

I'd like to congratulate the Netherlands Antilles, population 192,000, for the best Olympic medal points per million capita in the 2008 Olympics, followed by Jamaica, Bahamas and Iceland. Netherlands Antilles had a total medal points per capita score of over 10, and is the only country in the world with a score over 1o.

As in my earlier posts, a country's medal score is 3 for each gold medal, 2 for each silver and 1 for each bronze. Divide by the population size (nearest million, or, if under 11 million, then to rounded 2 digits accuracy) as given by Wikipedia's list of countries by population size (dated Aug 24 2008). Rather than saying "medal points per capita" over and over, lets abbreviate that MPC.

Interestingly, three Caribbean island nations top our list followed by Iceland. Perhaps not so surprising, Netherlands Antilles, Iceland and Bahamas are the three smallest countries on our population list.

In total, 88 countries won a total of 302 gold medals, 304 silver medals and a whopping 353 bronze medals for a total of 959 medals and 1867 possible points in a set of countries with 5.4 billion population, which represents about 81% of the world's population. The average result was .343 medal points per million people. If your favorite country is above .343, they are above average.

Australia (pop 89 mill) was the best scoring 'large' country, defined as a country with close to 100 million or more people, ranked 7th with a score of 4.24 MCP. Britain (pop 98 mill) at 1.61 MPC is ranked 23. The US (pop 305 mill), the overall medal count leader (110 medals) comes in above average at .72 MPC and ranked 45th. China, the overall medal points leader (223 medal points, 100 medals) and the overall gold medal leader with a whopping 51 gold medals ranks only 66th with a below average .17 MPC. Last place falls to India with .004 MPC, 3 medals, 1 gold and 2 bronze, but over a billion people.

In a ranking like this, there is something for nearly everyone. One can rank highly on medals, medal counts, population, wealth, as well as lack of wealth and lack of population. Getting any medals is quite an accomplishment for a small country.

Here with is the full table of all 88 countries with medals. Hope it's readable. Tried saving it as jpeg from pdf. Sigh. At the very bottom is a paste directly from excel which is more readable. Apologies all around.



Notes: Medal counts come from Yahoo, after the closing ceremonies. If gymnastics medals are redistributed following the investigation of various underage gymnasts, or any drug investigations, those medal changes are not included here.

Sorry for the small font. Directly pasting from Excel wasn't wonderful, but I'll do it below, it may be easier to read. And I have no idea what "Click Here" is doing in this table. I deleted it 4 or 5 times, but it insists on reappearing.

								points per
		Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Points	Pop	capita
1	Netherlands_Antilles	0	1	0	1	2	0.19	10.53
2	Jamaica	6	3	2	11	26	2.7	9.63
3	Bahamas	0	1	1	2	3	0.33	9.09
4	Iceland	0	1	0	1	2	0.32	6.25
5	Slovenia	1	2	2	5	9	2	4.50
6	Norway	3	5	2	10	21	4.8	4.38
7	Australia	14	15	17	46	89	21	4.24
8	Bahrain	1	0	0	1	3	0.76	3.95
9	Estonia	1	1	0	2	5	1.3	3.85
10	Mongolia	2	2	0	4	10	2.6	3.85
11	New_Zealand	3	1	5	9	16	4.3	3.72
12	Cuba	2	11	11	24	39	11	3.55
13	Belarus	4	5	10	19	32	9.7	3.30
14	Trinidad_&_Tobago	0	2	0	2	4	1.3	3.08
15	Georgia	3	0	3	6	12	4.4	2.73
16	Latvia	1	1	1	3	6	2.3	2.61
17	Slovakia	3	2	1	6	14	5.4	2.59
18	Denmark	2	2	3	7	13	5.5	2.36
19	Netherlands	7	5	4	16	35	16	2.19
20	Hungary	3	5	2	10	21	10	2.10
21	Lithuania	0	2	3	5	7	3.4	2.06
22	Armenia	0	0	6	6	6	3	2.00
23	Britain	19	13	15	47	98	61	1.61
24	Croatia	0	2	3	5	7	4.6	1.52
25	Czech_Republic	3	3	0	6	15	10	1.50
26	Kazakhstan	2	4	7	13	21	15	1.40
27	South_Korea	13	10	8	31	67	48	1.40
28	Finland	1	1	2	4	7	5.3	1.32
29	Switzerland	2	0	4	6	10	7.6	1.32
30	Azerbaijan	1	2	4	7	11	8.5	1.29
31	France	7	16	17	40	70	64	1.09
32	Bulgaria	1	1	3	5	8	7.6	1.05
33	Germany	16	10	15	41	83	82	1.01
34	Canada	3	9	6	18	33	33	1.00
35	Ukraine	7	5	15	27	46	46	1.00
36	Russia	23	21	28	72	139	142	.98
37	Sweden	0	4	1	5	9	9.2	.98
38	Panama	1	0	0	1	3	3.3	.91
39	Ireland	0	1	2	3	4	4.4	.91
40	Italy	8	10	10	28	54	60	.90
41	Spain	5	10	3	18	38	46	.83
42	Romania	4	1	3	8	17	21	.81
43	Mauritius	0	0	1	1	1	1.3	.77
44	Kenya	5	5	4	14	29	38	.76
45	United_States	36	38	36	110	220	305	.72
46	Zimbabwe	1	3	0	4	9	13	.69
47	Poland	3	6	1	10	22	38	.58
48	Kyrgyzstan	0	1	1	2	3	5.3	.57
49	Greece	0	2	2	4	6	11	.55
50	Dominican_Republic	1	1	0	2	5	9.8	.51
51	Austria	0	1	2	3	4	8.3	.48
52	Belgium	1	1	0	2	5	10.6	.47
53	Portugal	1	1	0	2	5	10.6	.47
54	North_Korea	2	1	3	6	11	24	.46
55	Tajikistan	0	1	1	2	3	6.7	.45
56	Singapore	0	1	0	1	2	4.6	.43
57	Serbia	0	1	2	3	4	9.9	.40
58	Japan	9	6	10	25	49	128	.38
59	Uzbekistan	1	2	3	6	10	27	.37
60	Tunisia	1	0	0	1	3	10.3	.29
61	Moldova	0	0	1	1	1	3.8	.26
62	Argentina	2	0	4	6	10	40	.25
63	Ethiopia	4	1	2	7	16	79	.20
64	Turkey	1	4	3	8	14	71	.20
65	Taiwan	0	0	4	4	4	23	.17
66	China	51	21	28	100	223	1320	.17
67	Thailand	2	2	0	4	10	63	.16
68	Cameroon	1	0	0	1	3	19	.16
69	Ecuador	0	1	0	1	2	13	.15
70	Togo	0	0	1	1	1	6.6	.15
71	Israel	0	0	1	1	1	7.3	.14
72	Brazil	3	4	8	15	25	188	.13
73	Chile	0	1	0	1	2	17	.12
74	Morocco	0	1	1	2	3	31	.097
75	Algeria	0	1	1	2	3	34	.088
76	Malaysia	0	1	0	1	2	27	.074
77	Colombia	0	1	1	2	3	45	.067
78	Mexico	2	0	1	3	7	107	.065
79	I.R.Iran	1	0	1	2	4	70	.057
80	Sudan	0	1	0	1	2	39	.051
81	South_Africa	0	1	0	1	2	48	.042
82	Afghanistan	0	0	1	1	1	27	.037
83	Venezuela	0	0	1	1	1	28	.036
84	Indonesia	1	1	3	5	8	232	.034
85	Nigeria	0	1	3	4	5	148	.034
86	Vietnam	0	1	0	1	2	87	.023
87	Egypt	0	0	1	1	1	75	.013
88	India	1	0	2	3	5	1137	.004
	Total	302	304	353	959	1867	5438	.343