There’s been a lot of talk about which is the most accurate way to count Olympic medals. The IOC has always used gold medals to determine rankings, with everything else being secondary. Meanwhile there’s an alternate school of thought that all medals are worthy of being counted, so it’s about the total a country earns that’s important.
Who won the Olympic medal count ranked per capita?
The greatest Olympic nation, mathematically.
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
We count medals to determine the greatest sporting country in the world. What if instead of weighting golds, or evaluating total medals, we determined standings based on how many medals a country wins per-capita? This would mean that we could determine how many medals a nation wins per number of citizens, and can show the prowess of a nation against the rest of the world in a more accurate way.
So, without further ado, here’s how the 2024 Paris games would look if we weighted medal count by citizens. To ensure this doesn’t get too silly if there’s one outlier athlete from a tiny nation we’re going to cap the minimum total medals at 10 to qualify. This means we can still get a deeper look at the rankings, without it being too heavily biased towards the other way.
2024 Olympics per capita medal count
Rank | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | Population | Citzens per medal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Zealand | 10 | 7 | 3 | 20 | 5,124,000 | 256,200 |
| 2 | Australia | 18 | 19 | 16 | 53 | 26,000,000 | 490,566 |
| 3 | Hungary | 6 | 7 | 6 | 19 | 9,643,000 | 507,526 |
| 4 | Netherlands | 15 | 7 | 12 | 34 | 17,700,000 | 520,588 |
| 5 | Great Britain | 14 | 22 | 29 | 65 | 66,970,000 | 1,030,308 |
| 6 | France | 16 | 26 | 22 | 64 | 67,970,000 | 1,062,031 |
| 7 | Belgium | 3 | 1 | 6 | 10 | 11,690,000 | 1,169,000 |
| 8 | Canada | 9 | 7 | 11 | 27 | 38,930,000 | 1,441,852 |
| 9 | Italy | 12 | 13 | 15 | 40 | 58,940,000 | 1,473,500 |
| 10 | South Korea | 13 | 9 | 10 | 32 | 51,630,000 | 1,613,438 |
| 11 | Germany | 12 | 13 | 8 | 33 | 83,800,000 | 2,539,394 |
| 12 | USA | 40 | 44 | 42 | 126 | 333,333,300 | 2,645,502 |
| 13 | Spain | 5 | 4 | 9 | 18 | 47,780,000 | 2,654,444 |
| 14 | Uzbekistan | 8 | 2 | 3 | 13 | 35,650,000 | 2,742,308 |
| 15 | Japan | 20 | 12 | 13 | 45 | 125,100,000 | 2,780,000 |
| 16 | Ukraine | 3 | 5 | 4 | 12 | 38,000,000 | 3,166,667 |
| 17 | Poland | 1 | 4 | 5 | 10 | 36,820,000 | 3,682,000 |
| 18 | Kenya | 4 | 2 | 5 | 11 | 54,030,000 | 4,911,818 |
| 19 | Iran | 3 | 6 | 3 | 12 | 88,550,000 | 7,379,167 |
| 20 | Brazil | 3 | 7 | 10 | 20 | 215,300,000 | 10,765,000 |
| 21 | China | 40 | 27 | 24 | 91 | 1,412,000,000 | 15,516,648 |
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