Medals per capita is a great measure of a country's Olympic prowess, no matter how small. Check out this chart listing all participating countries, the medals won, and the medals won per divided by the country's population.
At the moment, Jamaica has the best power-to-weight ratio with one medal for every 271,400 people and one gold for every 452,333 folks. The US is mid-pack at 43rd currently. India brings up the rear with one medal for every 378,930,733 citizens.
Makes a Fantasy Olympic League possible.
bluej
Reader
8/22/08 2:56 p.m.
I wonder what that would look like if it were recalibrated for what country all the athletes train in...
bluej wrote:
I wonder what that would look like if it were recalibrated for what country all the athletes train in...
Yeah, no kidding! It seems like every other person I see winning a medal from a small country actually trains in the US or some large European country. It seems that nearly all of the track stars went/go to school in the States (obviously training and competing in the US college circuit). There are also other countries where the competitor literally moved to X country to compete for them in the Olympics, until recently they had nothing to do with the country. Not really in the spirit of things, but what're you gonna do? For example, Bahrain got their first gold ever...it's a tiny country, so they're way up in the medal/capita table. However, the guy who won it is from (and trains in) Morocco. The Georgian beach volleyball team? Brazilians.
Bryce
cwh
Dork
8/22/08 7:09 p.m.
I understand that the Jamaicans actually train in Jamaica. At least that's what I get from the on-line news from there. They do have a pretty substantial training system set up, partly funded by the CUBANS!
Oh noes! Commie Olympics! In Soviet Olympics, medal wears YOU!
Go Aussies highest result of countries over 5 million people, hard to hide behind that and they are all trained in Oz
