Australia, The Netherlands, and New Zealand Won The Olympics
They produced more Olympians per capita than any other top 20 country.
Before you come in hot here, this is NOT an article designed to denigrate the accomplishments of any of the Olympic athletes who participated in this years’ Olympics, especially not the United States and China who came in at #1 and #2 respectively in terms of total medals and gold medals. The achievements of every medal winner (gold, silver or bronze) is truly inspirational and I, for one, have had a lot of fun and enjoyment watching this years’ Olympics.
Also hats off to the hosts in Paris (and France more broadly) because, despite some maybe-Seine River issues, the event seems to have gone off without a hitch. Holding an event like this in a single city, even one as large and prominent as Paris, is not easy, but at least from the outside looking in, it looked pretty amazing. And France’s own medal haul of 64 is also very impressive. That number would place France in third behind the United States and China if you’re counting based on total medals (some do, some count only gold, I’m not getting into that argument here).
With all that out of the way, and despite these impressive hauls, I want to write a bit about why it’s Australia, The Netherlands and New Zealand who are the most impressive teams as far as amount of medals won. And it all comes down to population (my specialty)!
If we take the top 12 teams by medal count, let’s say total rather than just gold, here’s what we come up with:
United States - 126
People’s Republic of China - 91
Great Britain - 65
France - 64
Australia - 53
Japan - 45
Italy - 40
The Netherlands - 34
Germany - 33
South Korea - 32
Canada - 27
New Zealand - 20
But these countries aren’t all equal. In fact, they all have very different populations. Here’s the same list with populations attached. And sorry for the numbered list. Apparently Substack can embed a complex financial chart but can’t handle a simple table. 🙄
United States - 126 - 331,893,745
China - 91 - 1,412,360,000
United Kingdom - 65 - 67,326,569
France - 64 - 67,749,632
Australia - 53 - 25,688,079
Japan - 45 - 125,681,593
Italy - 40 - 59,109,668
Netherlands - 34 - 17,590,672
Germany - 33 - 83,149,300
South Korea - 32 - 51,744,876
Canada - 27 - 38,246,108
New Zealand - 20 - 5,122,600
At this point, you probably see where I’m going with this. For as amazing as the United States and China are in their respective Olympic totals, it gets fairly paltry when you compare it to their respective populations. The United States, for example, earned 1 medal for every 2.6 million people. China has 1 medal for every 15.5 million people. Which means for every 2.6 and 15.5 million people that those two countries have given to this world, only a single Olympian has come out. Meanwhile, Australia, The Netherlands, and New Zealand have a population-medal ratio of:
Australia - 1 : 484,681
The Netherlands - 1 : 517,373
New Zealand - 1 : 256,130
Which means that for every 256,130 people from New Zealand, they produce an Olympian, making New Zealand about 10x more productive at producing medal winning Olympians than the United States, or about 60x more productive than China. When you think about the resources involved in nurturing, training, and supporting these athletes, you can start to see where these three countries, especially, are over-performing based on their respective total populations.
Now, of course, there are other things that go into all of this. For one, these three countries are all relatively wealthy. In fact, all of the top 12 countries are relatively wealthy. Money, unfortunately, goes a long way towards how well your particular country will perform in the Olympics. It’s not everything, of course, but it certainly doesn’t hinder anything. There’s also the aspect of a single athlete winning multiple trophies within a single range of competitions. Simone Biles is a force of gymnastic nature, to be sure, but she racked up 3 golds and a silver medal by herself, all in variations of the broader sport of gymnastics. The same could probably be said for many athletes across all countries that won multiple medals.
So to say this is a perfect analysis wouldn’t be true. But there’s still something to be said for how many Olympians your country can produce on a per capita basis. If nothing else, it merely shines a light on the fact that going by total medal count is perhaps not the most fair way to judge a country on their athletic merits. If the United States and China created Olympians at the same rate as New Zealand, they would have 1,295 and 5,514 medals each which is, quite simply, not possible. So maybe there’s simply an economy of scale at work here. Once you reach a certain point, every additional medal requires an exponentially more amount of resources.
Regardless, Australia, The Netherlands, and New Zealand all over-performed, in my opinion and that, I think, should be highlighted more often.