Alternative Olympic Games Medal Tally - 2012

Bill Mitchell's alternative medal tally - Last updated August 2, 2012 - 05:02 EAST
(Professor Bill Mitchell is the Professor of Economics, Director, Centre of Full Employment and Equity, University of Newcastle, Callaghan NSW 2308, Australia)


Olympic medal tallies are a contestable measure. What would happen if we added a few popular indices to a review of medal tallies by countries competing at the games?

Bill Mitchell presents an analysis is derived from the Olympic Games Medal Tally and aimed to present a different view of the Games. 

The absolute (official) medal count allows large nations to hear their national anthem a lot but hides facts like how large their economy is (the largest having more resources to devote to sport and nutrition etc), how large their population is (more people to win medals), and how much income per person the nation has (arguably the best measure of the capacity of the nation to mount a sport's campaign in pursuit of medals).

Alternative medal counts modify the official tally to take into account size of economy, size of population and the income per head that each medal-winning nation enjoys.

The comparisons cannot be used to extrapolate anything. There are clearly not enough medals available at the Olympic Games for a largely populated country like China or the US or India, to name a few of several to win their "fair share". But then we also would expect the large countries to exhibit scale economies that smaller countries cannot.

Whatever, the tables are not statistical or probabilistic in nature and carry no predictive value. They are just for some fun and should not be taken seriously.

The following table is presented by The Guardian.co.uk - sport - datablog - 2012 - alternative medal table

Alternative medal rankings

Country ▴	Official ranking	GDP	Population	Team size
All medal scores are weighted for the rankings, so that gold scores 3, silver scores 2 and bronze scores 1
Australia	15	14	4	25
Azerbaijan	39	33	36	40
Belarus	39	29	37	49
Belgium	39	48	40	48
Brazil	17	45	45	34
Canada	26	42	28	35
China	1	25	39	2
Colombia	23	12	32	21
Cuba	23	3	11	22
Czech Republic	29	15	21	38
Denmark	29	18	12	36
Egypt	29	16	46	37
France	4	28	13	9
Georgia	19	2	5	7
Germany	6	20	15	11
Great Britain	11	32	20	32
Greece	39	47	41	46
Hungary	12	6	3	13
India	39	49	49	43
Indonesia	27	38	48	3
Italy	7	22	17	12
Japan	9	40	26	10
Kazakhstan	8	11	7	8
Lithuania	19	8	2	16
Mexico	25	36	43	26
Moldova	39	5	27	29
Mongolia	39	7	23	33
Netherlands	17	30	14	28
New Zealand	37	37	18	45
North Korea	5	1	10	1
Norway	27	27	6	23
Poland	29	31	38	42
Qatar	39	43	16	14
Romania	16	4	8	5
Russia	10	17	29	24
Serbia	39	23	35	47
Singapore	39	46	30	30
Slovakia	37	26	21	30
Slovenia	19	9	1	18
South Africa	14	21	30	17
South Korea	3	13	9	6
Spain	29	44	42	44
Sweden	29	33	19	39
Taiwan	29	39	34	19
Thailand	29	19	44	15
USA	2	41	24	4
Ukraine	13	10	25	27
Uzbekistan	39	24	47	41
Venezuela	19	35	33	20