Olympic Medals Per Capita

The 2006 Winter Olympics is a showcase of talent for winter sports. So who came out on top? Germany may have won the most medals—29 of the 252 medals awarded at the games, but Norway beat every other country in medals per capita—an estimated 414 medals per 1 million population.

Per capita medal counts might be considered a better measure of winter sport talent since larger populations boost the probability that a country will have a top performer. By the per capita measure, Germany ranks only 12th in the medal count, with 35 medals per 1 million population. The U.S., which came in second in the overall medal count with a win of 25, ranks a lowly 21st among the 26 countries with at least one medal win, with 8 medals per 1 million population.

Some countries are so small that any win places them high in the per capita rankings. Latvia’s single medal places it ahead of most other countries by the per capita measure. On the other hand, China is so large that even if its athletes won every medal at the games it would still have only 19 medals per capita.

Below is the ranking of countries by their per capita medal count, with actual medals won shown in parentheses. (The populations used to determine the per capita count are for July 2005 and are from the CIA’s World Factbook):

COUNTRY: PER CAPITA MEDALS (ACTUAL MEDALS)
1. Norway: 414 (19)
2. Austria: 281 (23)
3. Estonia: 225 (3)
4. Switzerland: 187 (14)
5. Finland: 172 (9)
6. Sweden: 156 (14)
7. Canada: 73 (24)
8. Croatia: 67 (3)
9. Netherlands: 55 (9)
10. Latvia: 44 (1)
11. Czech Republic: 39 (4)
12. Germany: 35 (29)
13. South Korea: 23 (11)
14. Italy: 19 (11)
15. Slovakia: 18 (1)
16. Russia: 15 (22)
17. France: 15 (9)
18. Bulgaria: 13 (1)
19. Australia: 10 (2)
20. Belarus: 10 (1)
21. United States: 8 (25)
22. Poland: 5 (2)
23. Ukraine: 4 (2)
24. United Kingdom: 2 (1)
25. China: 1 (11)
26. Japan: 1 (1)