Medal Count (Winter Edition)

Patrick here. You may remember back in 2008, I counted medals a bit differently. (initial post, final tally). We’re about 75% of the way through Vancouver, so let’s see where we stand with the population and GDP metrics.

Medals per Population
1) Norway (1 per 286K)
2) Austria (1 per 837K)
3) Switzerland (1 per 972K)
–
11) Canada (1 per 3.1M)
21) USA (1 per 11.8M)

Medals per GDP
1) Latvia (1 per $12.1B)
2) Estonia (1 per $18.1B)
3) Norway (1 per $21.7B)
–
16) Canada (1 per $120B)
23) USA (1 per $549B)

4 thoughts on “Medal Count (Winter Edition)

  • 2/24/2010 at 2:40 pm
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    One thing I’ve noticed through the coverage is the people who were born and train in the US but compete for other countries. That skews the results.

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  • 2/24/2010 at 4:39 pm
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    I don’t think it’s skewed the results much yet, because those athletes haven’t medaled much (if at all). The athletes that were born in the USA and don’t compete for the USA, probably choose to compete for other countries because they can’t make the US team, and likely won’t medal.

    I know there was a Canadian guy who competed for Australia and won a silver, so that skewed those results.

    But at the top, I don’t think there are any “sketchy” citizenships involved with Norway, Austria, or Switzerland. All 3 of those countries have shown long-term Olympic success before all of these shenanigans.

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  • 2/24/2010 at 5:00 pm
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    I’d like to see some sort of measure of the amount of winter in a country vs medal count, like snowfall or average winter temps compared to medal count. It’s a little complicated with large varying climate countries though, should you try and take the overall country average? Or as long as their is a wintery region within the country just take the winter data from the coldest/snowiest region, maybe maximum distance from the equator?

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