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Which country REALLY won the Olympics - Bahamas, Jamaica or Iceland?

The main way of evaluating the winning nation is the number of gold medals won. In this analysis, the author has evaluated the medal haul according to population size.

by Minter Dial on 26 August 2008

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The Beijing Olympics have come to an end. It is hard to imagine that 303 events are crammed into the past 15 days.

The kick-off and finale were works of art (if well 'orchestrated' in the most generous of terms). And, true to form, China hauled in the largest number of gold medals (51), followed by the USA (36), unaccustomed to playing second fiddle.

Aside from chronicling the winning countries in this post, I have chosen to analyse the results according to population. There are many striking facts to these results - the best of which I will attempt to highlight.

Herewith the Top 20 countries, ranked by the number of golds won. The standout performance after the Chinese clearly belongs to Great Britain with 19 golds.

I choose a second table below to demonstrate the number of medals won per population member (a medal-per-pop measurement). In this chart, I have taken the Top 30, ranked by the most medals from the smallest pool of people. The chart shows the total number of medals won (second column), the ranking according to the total number of medals G/S/B (3rd col), followed by the percentage of golds won out of the country's total medals.

Finally, I cite the country's 2008 population (according to the US Census Bureau). In the last column, you have the population divided by the number of medals, showing - by some way of voodoo statistics - the pool of people that 'created' the winners.

The Bahamas (two medals) take the honours here with one medal per 153,000 citizens, followed by the miraculous Usain Bolt's Jamaica (11 medals) and then then Iceland (one medal) taking the bronze place. Slovenia, Australia (also placed sixth in the table above) and New Zealand round out the top six. Of the top medal scorers in the table above, Great Britain scrapes in at 26th with one medal per 1.3 million citizens.

For the record, under this calculation, China landed 68th place (13.3mm/pop), the US came in 45th (2.8mm/pop) and Russia 37th (2.0mm/pop). India was plum last of the medal winners with 383 million per pop.

And, for another viewpoint, the non-medal winning countries with the largest population (a sort of hall of shame, if it weren't for the political and social strife):

Pakistan 172 million (sixth largest)
Bangladesh 153 million (seventh)
Philippines 96 million (12th)
Congo Kinshasa 66 million (18th)
Burma 48 million (26th)

Among the major upsets I observed, from a US standpoint anyway, were the Americans getting only a bronze in baseball and having both the US men and women failing to qualify for the 4x100m. There were many others certainly. However, aside from having a war begin and end within the timeframe of the Olympics (with Russia's invading Georgia's [30 medals] South Ossetia & Abkhazia) and China's internal silencing and manipulated PR campaign, the largest other surprise I can come up with is the low level of doping scandals. Lo siento Rafa, but Nadal escaped again... along with surely many hundreds of others.

All in all, a fairly vivid affair. And, for the foreign companies that invested in advertising to the Chinese, presumably a winning gamble.

Comments (2)

by F. Sigurdarson on August 26, 2008

Thanks from Iceland for awarding us the statistical bronze medal. Note that the last column in the second table should be labeled - People/medals (number of people behind each medal) and not the other way around isn't it. But thanks again :-)

by Goose on August 26, 2008

excellent work on the medals per pop. i can say, having suffered through the audacity of NBC television here in the states that i was constantly waking up to find out who won earlier in Beijing but not seeing it until late that same night, giving a weird sense of deja vu or "wasn't this from yesterday?" sense. i did enjoy the web broadcasts, but how come there was no voice commentary? it's one thing to watch a sport i enjoy on the internet (say, water polo) but to do it with no broadcasters' voices and only muted stadium noises, made it peculiar and definitely not "must see". and not to put down the chinese government at all, but their highly concentrated efforts to shape these olympics for their glorious country was straight-up orwellian. am i the only person on the planet who is thinking, "the chinese government is dreadful about hiding the gymnast ages but it will never be uncovered?" from controversy to controversy in sport, pretty much anything that gets reported tends to come out absolutely correct. only the highest of profile athletes seem to avoid the crushing admission, but hiding a barry bonds or (sad to speculate) certain tour d'france winners is next to impossible compared to a complicit state working their magic. everyone knows that the chinese girls weren't 16. i bet even rogge and the IOC, but there's nothing you can do when the host government actively participates in the cover-up. including fraudlent passports. as for surprises, i think i enjoyed the USA mens' volleyball gold most of all (after the tragic killing of a coach's parent) but must say that the only thing i didn't tivo and fastforward through was the women's beach volleyball. is it too much to suggest i watched it on slo-mo? nah. in all seriousness, bolt's runs were so fantastic, they were worth rewinding and watching frame-by-frame, if only to make him seem mortal.