Adjusted medal tables - How does your country REALLY fare at the Olympics?

[rajiv 31]

These sort of tables of medals per million or medals per GDP have been around for years . They are trotted out after every Games 

 

The problem is that it is just impossible for populous countries to ever be a top contender on their basis  : for instance China has more millions of people than there are Olympic medals on offer 

A fair comparison method would and should allow any country to top the list -at least in theory 

In my view all a country can do is to not allow a less populous country or a less wealthy country ( however measured ) to be higher on a table of medals ( be it Gold or Total medals )

On this basis if USA ( the richest maybe ) or China ( the most populous &/or maybe the new richest ) do not finish as top country they have been beaten . Finishing top is par for these 2 countries 

But really there are so many ifs and buts -the Olympics has certain sports and not others and then just a certain no of events and not others n that sport and then some events give out 4 medals whereas the normal no is 3 medals . Obsessive Medal hunting countries like the old DDR and now GB look for low hanging fruit sports like track cycling which few countries care about  ( and barely exists outside the Olympics  ) DDR never worried much about team sports ( all that effort for just one possible medal ! )

[Vektor 3,326]

I think it's impossible to compare countries like the US or China to smaller ones like us no matter what kind of math you are using, so it's better to just look up how countries of similar importance on the global scale are doing at the Games. Like, for  the rivals on the medal table should be      for example, in other words, non-G20 countries with the population of somewhere between 40 and 5 million. That way I can see that we beat all the non-G20 countries in 2012, which effectively makes us the most successful smaller, "less important" nation at that Summer Games and that gives me a better idea of how well we did. 

[Vektor 3,326]

To present what I am talking about, the Top5 non-G20 countries at the last 5 Summer Games:

 

	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th
2000	8th, 12	10th, 11	11th, 11	13th, 8	14th, 6
2004	11th, 9	12th, 8	13th, 8	14th, 8	15th, 6
2008	11th, 7	12th, 7	13th, 6	14th, 5	15th, 5
2012	10th, 8	12th, 7	13th, 6	14th, 6	15th, 5
2016	11th, 8	12th, 8	14th, 7	15th, 6	16th, 6

 

You don't have to fix the medal table to see which are the best "second tier" nations at the Games. And then you can have a third tier for even smaller nations. Sure, some countries have it easier because they can collect more medals in athletics or swimming, but that has been always "part of the game", it's fundamentally part of the Olympics. 

[AgainstAllOdds 0]

On 17/04/2021 at 14:32, EselTheDonkey said:

China cannot send one billion people to the Games. Otherwise we would probably see more Chinese divers or gymnasts who could snatch gold. USA can send only team in Basketball, even though USA II might have chances to win gold as well. And so on.

 

Yes, that's true and is almost impossible to account for in statistics. I suppose ultimately there is no way to come up with a fool proof way of deciding this as there'll always be another angle to consider. 

 

17 hours ago, Vektor said:

To present what I am talking about, the Top5 non-G20 countries at the last 5 Summer Games:

 

	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th
2000	8th, 12	10th, 11	11th, 11	13th, 8	14th, 6
2004	11th, 9	12th, 8	13th, 8	14th, 8	15th, 6
2008	11th, 7	12th, 7	13th, 6	14th, 5	15th, 5
2012	10th, 8	12th, 7	13th, 6	14th, 6	15th, 5
2016	11th, 8	12th, 8	14th, 7	15th, 6	16th, 6

 

You don't have to fix the medal table to see which are the best "second tier" nations at the Games. And then you can have a third tier for even smaller nations. Sure, some countries have it easier because they can collect more medals in athletics or swimming, but that has been always "part of the game", it's fundamentally part of the Olympics. 

The non-G20 category is interesting and one I didn't consider before. Again though there are other variables that come into this to skew the data, but it's a good way of knocking out a few obvious outliers.