which country is best at sport per capita?

Question

If you take into account the fact that countries like USA and China have a huge pool of people to find thier athletes from, then their olympic medals will probably be brought into line with countries with smaller populations but less medals, such as Italy or Finland. So my question is: by looking at the ratio of population to medals, which do you think is the best country at sport?

Answer 1

if we based on the total medals won by every country during the 2004 Athens Olympics to their total population around that time. surprisingly, the Bahamas is the best country per capita. they only won 2 medals both in athletics and their population at that time was only 323,000, which translated to only 161,500 per medal. Debbie Ferguson was even quoted after winning the bronze medal in the women's 200M run, "I think per capita, the Bahamas already won the Olympics". but the Bahamas athletes only competed in one event and that was athletics so, in my opinion, that doesnt qualified as a sporting nation. .

in all sports, Australia is the best sporting country as they won a total of 49 medals (17 golds, 16 silvers, 16 bronzes) and their population at that time was around 20,155,000. so that equates to 411,326 people per medal won.



here are the top ten sporting countries, excluding Bahamas which only participated in one sport (athletics)..

1.) Australia - 411,326 (49 medals - 20,155,000)
2.) Cuba - 417,370 (27 medals - 11,269,000)
3.) Estonia - 443,333 (3 medals - 1,330,000)
4.) Slovenia - 491,750 (4 medals - 1,967,000)
5.) Jamaica - 530,200 (5 medals - 2,651,000)
6.) Latvia - 576,000 (4 medals - 2,307,000)
7.) Hungary - 594,000 (17 medals - 10,098,000)
8.) Greece - 695,000 (11 medals - 11,120,000)
9.) Bulgaria - 643,833 (12 medals - 7,726,000)
10.) Belarus - 650,333 (15 medals - 9,755,000)

i could also have excluded Jamaica in this list since all 5 medals they won comes from athletics as well. but they participated in one other event in 2004 Olympics and that was badminton

Answer 2

Maybe Germany? They usually win quite a few medals and they have a much smaller population than the USA, Russia, or China.

Here, in 2006 Winter Olympics, Germany won the most medals (29).
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/torino2006/medals

In the 2004 Summer Olympics, Germany won 49.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Summer_Olympics_medal_count

In July 2007, the estimated population of Germany was 82,400,996 people.

Do the math.

Answer 3

I remember a few years a go a survey about that and just for summer olympic games; the "real winner" was Jamaica.
Outside of olympics, Republic of San Marino has 30000 inhabitants and at least two world champions, in recent years (both in motorbike).

Answer 4

Slovenia - 2 million people like 10 guys in the nba

Answer 5

Jamaica produces sprinters, soccer players, and Patrick Ewing.
Or you could go with the Dominican Republic which produce a lot of baseball players.

Or Cuba who also produce baseball players that defect to the US, and boxers despite a small population.

Answer 6

If you are talking about all sports it has to be Australia.
Look at all of the sports they have been very good at for a very long time, and their population is about 16,000,000.