2008 Olympic Medals Per Capita

As a Canadian, whenever I watch the Olympics I always compare our performance to that of the US. Of course, Canada will never compete on a medal for medal basis with the Americans and indeed the recent Beijing Summer Olympics has made it appear that the globe is currently in a dual-pole medal universe revolving around China and the US. I do, however, compare how Canada is doing on a per capita basis versus the US. This is easy as the US population is roughly 10x the size of Canada. So if Canada has 15 medals the US should have roughly 150 and so forth. It is also easy to compare Canada and the US because the GDP/capita is also in the same ballpark. Of course, you'd expect that the G8 countries and all "western" or rich GDP/capita countries to do better in medals vs. less well-off countries because there likely is a high correlation with money being spent on athletes and general economic well being. I put together the following table which compares all of the countries that won a medal in the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics on a total medals per million people basis.

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

All population totals are from the CIA World Factbook (July 2008 estimates), while medal totals are correct as of August 24, 2008. The fifth column below is a representation of how many total medals a country earned per one million people, while the last column on the right is the way that country would finish if rank was determined by medals per capita.

Adam van Koeverden, (AFP/Getty Images)

Everyone here at R4NT would like to congratulate the Bahamas as being the Beijing Summer Olympics per capita gold medalist with 6.51 medals per million people. The Bahamas won two medals (silver in Men's 4x100 relay and bronze in Men's Triple Jump) with a population of only 307,451 people. followed by Jamaica (3.92), Iceland (3.29), Slovenia (2.49) and Australia (2.23). Bringing up the rear, not including countries which did not win a medal, are India (0.00), which won three medals, Vietnam (0.01), Egypt (0.01), Indonesia (0.02) and South Africa (0.02).

Rank	Country	Medals	Population	Medal/Mil.	Per Capita Rank
1	USA	110	303,824,646	0.36	45
2	China	100	1,330,044,605	0.08	68
3	Russia	73	140,702,094	0.52	37
4	Britain	48	60,943,912	0.79	26
5	Australia	46	20,600,856	2.23	5
6	Germany	42	82,369,548	0.51	38
7	France	40	64,057,790	0.62	32
8	South Korea	31	49,232,844	0.63	31
9	Italy	28	58,145,321	0.48	39
9	Ukraine	28	45,994,287	0.61	33
11	Japan	25	127,288,419	0.2	57
12	Cuba	24	11,423,952	2.1	8
13	Belarus	19	9,685,768	1.96	11
14	Spain	18	40,491,051	0.44	40
14	Canada	18	33,212,696	0.54	36
16	Netherlands	16	16,645,313	0.96	22
17	Brazil	15	191,908,598	0.08	67
18	Kenya	14	37,953,838	0.37	43
19	Kazakhstan	13	15,340,533	0.85	24
20	Jamaica	11	2,804,332	3.92	2
21	Poland	10	38,500,696	0.26	51
21	Hungary	10	9,930,915	1.01	21
21	Norway	10	4,644,457	2.15	7
24	New Zealand	9	4,173,460	2.16	6
25	Romania	8	22,246,862	0.36	46
25	Turkey	8	71,892,807	0.11	64
27	Ethiopia	7	78,254,090	0.09	66
27	Denmark	7	5,484,723	1.28	18
27	Azerbaijan	7	8,177,717	0.86	23
27	Lithuania	7	3,565,205	1.96	10
31	Czech Rep.	6	10,220,911	0.59	34
31	Slovakia	6	5,455,407	1.1	20
31	Georgia	6	4,630,841	1.3	17
31	North Korea	6	23,479,089	0.26	52
31	Argentina	6	40,677,348	0.15	62
31	Switzerland	6	7,581,520	0.79	25
31	Uzbekistan	6	28,268,440	0.21	55
31	Armenia	6	2,968,586	2.02	9
39	Slovenia	5	2,007,711	2.49	4
39	Bulgaria	5	7,262,675	0.69	30
39	Indonesia	5	237,512,355	0.02	84
39	Sweden	5	9,045,389	0.55	35
39	Croatia	5	4,491,543	1.11	19
44	Mongolia	4	2,996,081	1.34	16
44	Thailand	4	65,493,298	0.06	70
44	Zimbabwe	4	12,382,920	0.32	47
44	Finland	4	5,244,749	0.76	28
44	Greece	4	10,722,816	0.37	42
44	Nigeria	4	138,283,240	0.03	80
44	Taiwan	4	22,920,946	0.17	60
51	Mexico	3	109,955,400	0.03	81
51	Latvia	3	2,245,423	1.34	15
51	India	3	1,147,995,898	0	87
51	Austria	3	8,205,533	0.37	44
51	Ireland	3	4,156,119	0.72	29
51	Serbia Rep.	3	10,159,046	0.3	49
57	Belgium	2	10,403,951	0.19	58
57	Dominican Rep.	2	9,507,133	0.21	56
57	Estonia	2	1,307,605	1.53	13
57	Portugal	2	10,676,910	0.19	59
57	Iran	2	65,875,223	0.03	79
57	Trinidad & Tobago	2	1,047,366	1.91	12
57	Algeria	2	33,769,669	0.06	72
57	Bahamas	2	307,451	6.51	1
57	Colombia	2	45,013,674	0.04	75
57	Kyrgyzstan	2	5,356,869	0.37	41
57	Morocco	2	34,343,219	0.06	73
57	Tajikistan	2	7,211,884	0.28	50
69	Bahrain	1	718,306	1.39	14
69	Cameroon	1	18,467,692	0.05	74
69	Panama	1	3,292,693	0.3	48
69	Tunisia	1	10,383,577	0.1	65
69	Chile	1	16,454,143	0.06	71
69	Ecuador	1	13,927,650	0.07	69
69	Iceland	1	304,367	3.29	3
69	Malaysia	1	25,274,133	0.04	76
69	South Africa	1	43,786,115	0.02	83
69	Singapore	1	4,608,167	0.22	54
69	Sudan	1	40,218,455	0.02	82
69	Vietnam	1	86,116,559	0.01	86
69	Afghanistan	1	32,738,376	0.03	78
69	Egypt	1	81,713,517	0.01	85
69	Israel	1	7,112,359	0.14	63
69	Moldova	1	4,324,450	0.23	53
69	Mauritius	1	1,274,189	0.78	27
69	Togo	1	5,858,673	0.17	61
69	Venezuela	1	26,414,815	0.04	77

What conclusions can we draw from this analysis? Most importantly, while this gives an interesting way to look at the Olympics results, it isn't without its problems. Extremely large and extremely small countries skew the rankings. As noted, the Bahamas winning two medals puts it into the gold medal position due to its very small size, likewise Iceland winning one (silver) medal and its 3rd position. It is much easier for a country with 1 million people to win one medal and get a 1.0 ranking (1 medal per million people) then it is for Canada, for example, to win 33 medals and get a 1.0 ranking. Likewise, a country like India or China would not be able to achieve that 1.0 ranking at all. China would need to win 1,330 medals to obtain that 1.0 ranking, while it won 100 medals (2nd overall) yet achieved just a 0.08 per capita rank (68th overall).

Photograph by Mike Powell for NEWSWEEK

However, it does show countries that are fighting above their weight class due to focus on the summer Olympics sports, government type or natural inclination to a few sports. Australia, a perennial summer Olympics favourite, shows very well at 5th. Jamaica cleaned up in track and field getting 11 medals while only having a population of 2.8 million people. And who knew Slovenia was lighting it up? Slovenia, a country of only 2 million people, won 5 medals, good enough for 4th overall. Other interesting notes, Cuba with a top 10 finish, illustrating perhaps how government subsidies for athletes can impact medal hauls, Norway, a more typically winter Olympic country putting in a good show with 10 medals and Armenia winning 6 bronzes with only 2.97 million people.

Zhang Juanjuan shoots in the match. (Photo credit: Xinhua)

On the other end we find the very large countries and countries that are generally on the lower end of the GDP per capita scale. India, which as discussed would never show well by this metric due to its sheer size, finished last, followed by Vietnam, Egypt and Indonesia, all countries with greater than 80 million people. South Africa is somewhat of a surprise at 83rd place as it has 43.8 million people but only got one medal. Out of the richer countries, Japan had a relatively disappointing finishing at 57th with 25 medals.

Jamaica Winning the Relay (new world record as well). (Photo credit: Xinhua)

Canada finished 36th out of 86 countries, which is better on a per capita basis than the US (45th), Russia (37th), Germany (38th), Italy (39th) and Spain (40th). So compared to some other G8 or "Western industrialized countries", Canada places well, but is behind some smaller (and not so small) European nations like UK (26th), France (32nd), Netherlands (22nd), Denmark (18th). I'm going to do this same exercise after the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver and expect to see Canada come out better due to the natural winter sport bias.