Which country really won the Tokyo Olympics – and at what cost?
So who won the Olympics? The easy answer is to look at the medal table. But that table is very much loaded in favour of those with large populations. To answer the question we must consider a few other factors to discover who really won the Olympics and at what cost.
For many years, Australia did better on the Olympic medal table when you considered our relatively small population. But we are now performing so well that our sixth place on the overall medal table is much better than where it would be if we did a per capita medal table:
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On a per capita basis, we fall to 14th. With an average of 560,609 people per medal, we are well behind the 11,333 Sammarinese, who are sharing the three medals won by San Marino.
But population is just one factor that leads to medals.
The reality is the medals are hogged by a few nations. The top 10 nations won 60% of all gold medals. And all are advanced or large economies.
GDP is a big factor in how many medals a nation will win:
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One problem, however, is the US and China have such large economies that they skew the data (China’s economy is three times that of the next biggest economy of Japan). But even when we take out those two mega-economies, the link with GDP and medals won is clear – in fact it is a greater link to medal success than population size:
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Australia certainly performed better than you would expect given the size of our economy. Our 46 medals are well above the 24 and 20 medals won by the similar sized economies of Canada and South Korea.
Interestingly, there is less a link between GDP per capita and medals won – suggesting it is not just about wealth:
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On a per GDP basis, however, we fall from our 6th spot on the table to just 43rd – slightly above Great Britain and well in front on the US which now comes 87th, but well behind San Marino (again) and Grenada and Jamaica:
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But money is not everything and one rather dispiriting, and yet not wholly unsurprising, finding is that there is a pretty strong link between inequality and winning medals.
While for all 93 nations that won medals, the link is less clear – because so many nations won only a few medals – for those nations than won more than 15 medals, it is obvious that a less equal economy leads to more medals:
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Brazil is really the only exception – its massive inequality would be expected to produce more medals. However, it is also one of those nations that perform much better on the Olympic medal tally than on the rank of nations according to the United Nation’s Human Development Index.
The index, which takes into account income as well as education and life expectancy, is not particularly well linked to how a nation will perform at the Olympics, but some notable nations, such as Russia, China, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Brazil, are lowly ranked HDI nations but relatively highly ranked at the Olympics:
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Similarly, while there is not a great link between vaccination rates and medals won, some nations – such as Russia, Australia, Japan and the US – are much better at winning medals than vaccinating their citizens:
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But as we are again reminded with the latest IPCC report out on Monday, the Olympics may continue to go on in spite of a pandemic, but so too does climate change.
So which nations were the dirtiest – not in terms of drugs but emissions?
Here we see Grenada take the title with the lowest emissions per medal, and Australia slips all the way down to 38th:
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It would be nice to think we might improve by the next Olympic Games in Paris, and yet perhaps appropriately, because of our weak commitment to the Paris accord, unless we win a lot more medals than we did over the past fortnight, most likely each one we get will be dirtier than most other nations’.