Sport

What if the Olympic medals table was determined by golds per capita?

What if the Olympic medals table was determined by golds per capita?

At the halfway stage it's looking like a very good Olympics for Team GB. With 10 golds, 13 silvers and 7 bronzes, we're well on our way to achieving a best ever away Games.

The only nations currently ahead of us in the medals table are the United States (24 golds) and China (13).

But it probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that these world superpowers are doing better than many smaller nations.

Not only do national sporting budgets help to skew the table, but so do the talent pools with which they can pick from.

What if the table was rearranged so that it was defined by medals per capita? That's exactly what the website (er, aptly named) 'Medals per Capita' has been doing.

The top 10 for gold medals per capita (as of Saturday 13th August) looks like this (golds per capita in brackets):

1. Fiji - 1 gold (892,145)

2. Kosovo - 1 gold (1,859,203)

3. Hungary - 5 golds (1,968,937)

4. Slovenia - 1 gold (2,063,768)

5. Croatia - 2 golds (4,224,404)

6. New Zealand - 2 golds (4,595,700)

7. Jamaica - 1 gold (2,725,941)

8. Puerto Rico - 1 gold (3,474,182)

9. Australia - 6 golds (23,781,169)

10. Switzerland - 2 golds (8,286,976)

The UK comes in at a respectable 16th place (6,513,823 people per gold), with the US in 26th (13,392,450) and China down in 41st (105,478,461) of the 42 teams to have claimed a gold so far.

More: The countries that produce the most medals per capita at the Olympics

The Conversation (0)
x