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.

 

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