Olympic sports fans must know that there is a precious web site called
Medals per Capita showing "Olympic Glory in Proportion" with data going back to 1896. This site is updated every morning throughout the Rio Olympics (not frequent enough for some fans, myself included). Interestingly, it has all Summer Games listed but no Winter Games except for Sochi 2014. Another peculiarity is that the stats are tabulated as Population per Medal despite the name of the site being "Medals per Capita". Nonetheless, this site is highly recommended if you want to know how countries are actually performing relative to their population size. In a tongue-in-cheek attempt to be more up-to-date than
Medals per Capita, we did a quick spreadsheet exercise summarized as follows. After 3 days of medal-awarding competition in Rio (end-of-day on August 8), here are the "true rankings" of the 38 medal-winning nations so far:
| Rank |
Country |
Medals |
Population |
Medals per Billion |
| 1 |
Kosovo |
1 |
1836978 |
1633.12 |
| 2 |
Hungary |
3 |
9823000 |
916.22 |
| 3 |
New Zealand |
2 |
4709417 |
849.36 |
| 4 |
Croatia |
1 |
4190669 |
715.88 |
| 5 |
Mongolia |
1 |
3098525 |
645.47 |
| 6 |
Australia |
7 |
24142625 |
621.31 |
| 7 |
Sweden |
2 |
9894888 |
505.31 |
| 8 |
Belgium |
2 |
11322674 |
353.27 |
| 9 |
Denmark |
1 |
5717014 |
349.83 |
| 10 |
Italy |
9 |
60665551 |
313.19 |
| 11 |
Georgia |
1 |
3720400 |
268.79 |
| 12 |
Kazakhstan |
3 |
17753200 |
225.31 |
| 13 |
South Korea |
5 |
50801405 |
216.53 |
| 14 |
Taiwan |
3 |
23508362 |
212.69 |
| 15 |
Azerbaijan |
1 |
9730500 |
205.54 |
| 16 |
Netherlands |
1 |
17025380 |
176.21 |
| 17 |
Canada |
4 |
36155487 |
138.29 |
| 18 |
Thailand |
4 |
65346190 |
137.73 |
| 19 |
Russia |
10 |
146599183 |
129.61 |
| 20 |
Japan |
10 |
126990000 |
125.99 |
| 21 |
USA |
19 |
324193000 |
111.04 |
| 22 |
UK |
4 |
65110000 |
107.51 |
| 23 |
Portugal |
1 |
10341330 |
96.70 |
| 24 |
Greece |
1 |
10858018 |
92.10 |
| 25 |
North Korea |
1 |
25281000 |
79.11 |
| 26 |
South Africa |
2 |
55653654 |
71.87 |
| 27 |
Ukraine |
2 |
42673911 |
70.30 |
| 28 |
Argentina |
1 |
43590400 |
68.82 |
| 29 |
Uzbekistan |
2 |
31807000 |
62.88 |
| 30 |
Colombia |
1 |
48805156 |
61.47 |
| 31 |
Vietnam |
1 |
92700000 |
32.36 |
| 32 |
France |
1 |
66736000 |
29.97 |
| 33 |
Poland |
1 |
38437239 |
26.02 |
| 34 |
Brazil |
2 |
206275579 |
24.24 |
| 35 |
Spain |
1 |
46438422 |
21.53 |
| 36 |
Philippines |
1 |
103422400 |
19.34 |
| 37 |
China |
13 |
1377907812 |
18.87 |
| 38 |
Indonesia |
2 |
258705000 |
15.46 |
Despite all its troubles, Rio 2016 is off to a great start. The Games also have an attractive (and wearable) emblem that is a quantum leap from the hideous mass that was London 2012's. Check out our 3D printed (with
ColorFabb WoodFill) below!
