So you thought China and America were top of the medal count? Well, you were wrong.
In fact they’re coming 44th and 32nd respectively – in the Medals Per Capita count that is.
You see, there are four ways you can measure a medals tally.
The first, which is the way most Australian press do it, is you just count the gold medals a country wins. I’m sorry to say it, but that isn’t a medal count, it’s a GOLD medal count.
The second is to give each kind of medal a different weighting i.e. gold 3, silver 2 and bronze 1, which gives you a slightly fairer comparison between countries.
The third is to count the total medals a country wins – which, incidentally is the way NBC have decided to do it since it became clear it was the only way the USA could rank as top of the pops.
And the fourth is to count the total medals a country wins per capita. And given this is how you can make China seem to be coming 44th and the USA 32nd, it’s my favourite.
So let’s have a look at this. Who are the grandmasters when it comes to the Per Capita Count?
Well it turns out to be… drum roll please… Armenia. Thanks to their weightlifting and wrestling teams Armenia has given one giant suplex to the rest of the world by winning one medal per 593,717 head of population.
They’re followed closely by Slovenia (1,003,856), which is followed even more closely by Australia (1,030,043) and then Slovakia (1,311,187). And India, with one lonely medal for a population of 1,147,995,898, has some serious catching up to do.
Actually, thinking about it, the most fair way to work this out is to get a weighted medal score per country and then divide that country's population by the figure. And if you do that - the ultimate leader of the Olympic Games is...
But who could be bothered?
Anyway, whichever way you do it Australia is top of the pops (and poor old India is struggling big time). The conventional gold medal count has us at 4th. The weighted medal count has us at equal 3rd with Russia. The total medal count has us at 4th. And the Per Capita Medal count has us at 3rd.
So it’s comforting to know whichever way you cut, shuffle, jiggle or bend the statistics the great land of Oz turns up gold… or bronzed anyway.
