Did we punch below our weight when it comes to winning Olympic medals?

The Olympic medals won by the O’Donovan brothers and Annalise Murphy lifted the nation, and rightly so. But now the razzmatazz is over, if not the controversies, let’s look at how much bang we got for our buck.

We spent €34m through the Sports Council, or €17m per medal, which seems a poor return compared to Britain’s €6.1m and Australia’s €7.2m.

However, these two countries did exceptionally well – and the Irish Sports Council has pointed to many fantastic Irish performances that fell short of medals.

Hurdler Thomas Barr couldn’t have been closer in the 400m and Scott Evans battled heroically to win our first Olympic match in badminton against a top seed before knocking out a local favourite.

An Irish Sports Council spokesman said: ‘In Rio there was a clear improvement in performance as highlighted in the number of top 10 (14) and top 20 (14) finishes.’

Fair enough. Our ranking on the Olympic medal table (62nd) is better than our world ranking in population (120th). But it’s not really population that counts when it comes to medals – it’s money.

And on the basis of overall wealth, we rank 43rd in the world (although you could argue our economic statistics are artificially inflated).

So is the Olympics a club for rich countries? It’s no coincidence that a third of Britain’s medallists went to private schools, and these are the alma maters of many Olympic sports: rowing, dressage, rugby, hockey and gymnastics.

These sports are probably in the Olympics because they used to be the preserve of well-off young gentlemen who pioneered the Games.

Meanwhile, more than 60% of countries – or 119 in total – didn’t win anything, and almost all of these nations are poor.

Seven of the top ten medal-winning nations are also in the wealthiest top 10. The rankings for medals and GDP roughly correspond and aberrations tend to prove the rule.

India won only a silver and a bronze despite its huge economy – because a 1.25 billion population makes it a poor country. Those people need to be fed and educated, not taught synchronised swimming.

That didn’t stop India being infected with a quadrennial hunger for shiny metal like everyone else. Athletes were offered $160,000 for a gold, $120,000 for silver and $80,000 for bronze. Alas that didn’t work, and few African, Asian and South American countries are among the 77 medal-winners.

Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa are the only sub-Saharan countries in the top 50, largely thanks to superb long-distance runners.

They would have won a lot more if runners weren’t lured elsewhere by a more attractive (to some) form of shiny metal – money. Thirty Kenyan-born athletes competed for other nations.

We’re not above pinching the athletes ourselves. Oliver Dingley competed for Britain but switched to us when he wasn’t picked for the Olympics.

He may not have won a medal but he did achieve a notable distinction – by becoming the first Englishman to dive for Ireland.