With a British population of 60,700,000, that equates to a rate of return of one Gold per 3.2 million and one medal per 1.3 million. As the table below illustrates that shows us punching above our weight when compared to all three of the countries above us in the medals table and doing way better per head of population than Germany, Japan, Italy, France and Spain in particular).
Two nations do well out of this analysis. Jamaica's tally of 11 medals, including 6 Gold medals, means that they have one Gold per 450,000 and one medal per 250,000 - Jamaica has a population of only 2,700,000. Also doing well, lest we forget this in our crowing, is Australia. With a population of only 20,700,000, the Aussies won 14 Gold medals (1.5 million people per Gold medal versus our 3.2 million) and 46 medals all told (0.45 million people per medal versus our 1.3 million). So while we can - and indeed should - congratulate ourselves for having an incredible per capita return on our medals (as well as an incredible number of medals per se) let us not get too carried away. The Aussies may have been beaten this time - but you can bet your bottom dollar they'll be back for 2012 wanting to stick it to us in our own back yard!
2 comments:
Actually the Bahamas, Iceland, Norway and Slovenia also beat Australia on the medals per capita tally. And Australia did really poorly when you consider GDP! You can see the full results here: http://bit.ly/3ew13I
There was a threshold of winning 5 Gold medals to be included in the table otherwise it would have got silly!
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