Olympic Medals by Population
Winter Olympics medals per 10 million population:
Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 27 29 Country Norway Estonia Austria Switzerland Finland Croatia Sweden Canada Netherlands Slovenia Germany Bulgaria Italy Czech Republic France U.S. Australia Russia Belarus South Korea Poland Spain Britain Japan China Denmark Belgium Kazakhstan Ukraine 2002 56 21 20 16 14 8 7 6 5 5 4 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 <1/2 <1/2 - - - - 1998 73 0 24 10 24 0 3 5 7 0 3 1 2 3 1 1 1 1 2 1 0 0 <1/2 1 <1/2 2 1 1 <1/2 Total 129 21 44 26 38 8 10 11 12 5 7 4 4 5 3 2 2 2 3 2 1 1 1 1 <1/2 2 1 1 <1/2
comments:
1. it's not much of a surprise that the constant powers in winter sports are norway, finland, and sweden - and austria and switzerland. the appearance out of nowhere of croatia and slovenia is interesting, but then, the '84 games were in sarajevo. note: norway had 56 times as many medals as the u.s.
2. just as the tiny caribbean countries have a demographic advantage in the summer olympics, so do the tiny baltics at the winter games. hence estonia's overall second-place showing. and let's not forget that lithuania was seriously screwed out of their ice-dancing medal.
3. and speaking of canada, they are clearly the dominant nation among countries of population 20 million or more, with half again as many medals as the next closest, germany.