By Daniel Rigney
Russia and the United States racked up 59 medals between them in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, but it was Norway, a nation of only 5 million, that won the Per Capita Olympics (PCO) hands down.
Russia and the United States racked up 59 medals between them in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, but it was Norway, a nation of only 5 million, that won the Per Capita Olympics (PCO) hands down.
Norway
won 26 N. By my reckoning, that comes to 5.2 medals per million
residents, or 0.0000052 per capita. Pound for pound and person for
person, Norway surpassed its nearest rival, Slovenia (population 2.1
million), another small nation with a big Olympic heart, to win the
Games according to a scoring system that levels the hockey rink.
Here’s how the PCO standings look when we calculate total medals per million heads.
Medals Per Million Population
1. 1. Norway 5.2
2. 2. Slovenia 3.8
3. 3. Austria 2.1
4. 4.Latvia 1.8
5. 5. Sweden 1.6
6. 6. Netherlands 1.4
7. 7. Switzerland 1.4
8. 8. Finland .9
9. 9. Czech Republic . .8
10. 10. Canada .7
Some
may insist that the rankings be weighted to reflect the relative value
of gold, silver and bronze medals. Okay, then. When we assign the metals
of the medals a value of 3, 2, or 1 respectively and recalculate, we
get this slightly different top ten.
Weighted Medal Count Per Million Population
1. 1. Norway 10.6 (weighted score)
2. 2. Slovenia 7.0
3. 3. Austria 4.0
4. 4. Switzerland 3.3
5. 5. Netherlands 2.8
6. 6. Latvia 2.7
7. 7. Sweden 2.7
8. 8. Finland 1.9
9. 9. Belarus 1.7
10. 10. Canada 1.6
Belarus nudges the Czech Republic aside this time and rises to join the elite.
The
goliaths may have dominated this year’s Olympics in total medal count,
but it was the Davids who prevailed in the Per Capita Olympics. In the
PCO scoring system, Russia and the United States finished far, far down
the list.
Don’t
believe me? Do the arithmetic. And why shouldn’t smaller countries get
well-earned respect for their achievements? They have the numbers to
prove they deserve it, pound for pound, and person for person.
No comments:
Post a Comment