Another Olympics has come and gone, so it is once again time to take a look at who “won” the Games by several different metrics. Per my previous posts, I continue to use a weighted scoring system to tally Olympic medals by country. This year I once again tracked not just the medal counts but also economic and demographic metrics for each country – you can see my full spreadsheet here – for my 2024 Olympics wrap-up:
Medal Score
The USA was the clear victor in medal scores, tying China in golds, and winning silvers, bronzes, total medals, and weighted medal score by double digits. The top performers by weighted medal score were:
- 374 – USA
- 305 – China
- 180 – France
- 165 – Great Britain
- 163 – Australia
USA, China, and Great Britain were #1, #2, and #4 respectively, in exactly their same positions from the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. However, Russia wasn’t allowed to compete this year, creating room for host country, France, at #3. Japan, no longer the host country, dropped from the #5 spot and was replaced by Australia. Given France’s rise (from #10 in 2020) and Japan’s fall (to #6 in 2024), it seems that host countries enjoy home field advantage.
Mighty Small Countries
The leaders in these summer Olympics are all large countries; the leaderboard changes quite a bit when normalized by population (or by GDP). The top performers by weighted medal score per million citizens were:
- 71.43 – Dominica
- 40.00 – Saint Lucia
- 20.00 – Grenada
- 14.80 – New Zealand
- 7.00 – Bahrain
New Zealand’s weighted medal score per million citizens didn’t change much since 2020 (14.00), but it was eclipsed by a few much smaller countries that earned medals this year. Kudos to these countries for high performance despite having small athletic talent pools.
Even The Least Wealthy Countries Can Win
Accounting for the wealth, rather than the population, of each country by measuring their weighted medal score per GDP (PPP) doesn’t change the top five much:
- 5.0 – Dominica
- 2.0 – Saint Lucia
- 0.67 – Grenada
- 0.43 – Jamaica
- 0.27 – Georgia
GDP Per Capita Is Wild
However, normalizing weighted medal score by GDP per capita does yield some interesting results:
- 0.0122 – China
- 0.0047 – Kenya
- 0.0045 – USA
- 0.0044 – Uzbekistan
- 0.0043 – Ethiopia
Now those are some strange bedfellows!
That’s A Wrap
That’s a wrap for the 2024 Olympics wrap-up – congratulations to all competitors, countries, and fans! Now the countdown has begun to the Winter Olympics in italia!