who has the most medals per capita?

Edit: I’ve updated this list – see the final results for the 2010 Olympics medals per capita.

currently, the United States is leading the Olympic medals count, with 35 medals. My native Canada is in third place, with 23 medals (we also have the highest number of gold medals, with 12)! I was thinking that in comparison to the United States we’re actually doing pretty well, as we have roughly a tenth the population that the USA has… in which case, per capita, we’re earning many more medals than the United States is.

that got me thinking… of the current leaderboard, who is getting the most medals, per capita? Is it Canada, or someone else? I assumed it was someone else, and I was right… but I was pretty amazed to see by just how much that other country is getting more medals per capita than my own!

of the current top 10 medal holders (I didn’t calculate for 11+), the tally looks like this:

1. Norway – 4.403 medals per million!! (21 medals, population 4,769,274)
2. Austria – 1.914 mpm (15 medals, population 8,344,319)
3. Switzerland – 1.179 mpm (9 medals, population 7,630,605)
4. Canada – 0.690 mpm (23 medals, population 33,311,389)
5. Germany – 0.341 mpm (27 medals, population 82,140,043)
6. Korea – 0.288 mpm (14 medals, population 48,607,000)
7. France – 0.177 mpm (11 medals, population 62,048,473)
8. United States – 0.115 mpm (35 medals, population 304,059,724)
9. Russian Federation – 0.106 mpm (15 medals, population 141,800,000)
10. China – 0.008 mpm (11 medals, population 1,325,639,982)

this medals per million leaderboard is going to change as soon as I publish this, of course – perhaps I’ll make another post with the final tallies when the Olympics is over. But I have to say… way to go Norway, for cranking out four and a half Olympic medals per million people… that is simply amazing!!

5 thoughts on “who has the most medals per capita?

  • February 27, 2010 at 11:29 pm
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    Now, what would be interesting, is medals per snow/cold-covered area percentage of the year 😉

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  • March 1, 2010 at 11:01 am
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    Interesting, but a little misleading, since the number of persons a country can send to the games isn’t determined on a per capita basis. It’s not like the USA got to send 10 times as many athletes as Canada, so the total populations aren’t really that relevant.

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    • March 2, 2010 at 1:06 pm
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      that’s a good point, though perhaps in larger countries there is a better potential to get better people to fill that limited number of spots, simply because you have more people to choose from.

      Reply
  • Pingback: Brian Crawford » Vancouver 2010 Olympics medals per capita, final tally

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