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Most Successful Countries of All-Time: Per Capita (2016 UDATE)

Generally the most successful countries in terms of Olympic medals won are also some of the biggest countries in terms of population. This may seem unfair when comparing the success of countries, as the bigger countries have a larger population pool from which to develop athletes. Using per capita data to rank success of nations at the Olympic Games is an alternative to the popular way of ranking based on just total gold medals won.

The following analysis is based on the total medals won by a country throughout modern Olympic history (we have also calculated the per capita medal results for the 2008 Olympic Games, though with the small sample size a single medal to a small nation can make a big difference to the ranking).

Below are tables of the top countries based on the total all-time medals won during the Summer Olympics (including 2016 data), ranked relative to the nation's population (figures mostly from 2015).

See the complete medal list and population data from which this analysis is derived, and also a discussion of different ranking systems. We have also calculated lists based on medals per GDP.

The Finns are Best when you consider Total Medals

Finland is the most successful currently competing country at the Olympic Games based on their population size and the number of Olympic medals won (irrespective of whether you use the total golds or total medals metric). Finland have won 101 gold medals in 25 appearances at the Summer Olympics, with a current population of 5.5 million people. Denmark, with a similar population and from the same region, have won only 45 gold medals. Many of Finland's medals were gained in early last century, with only a few medals won in recent Olympiads.

A country which has leaped into the top 10 is the small nation of Grenada which won its first gold medal in 2012, when runner Kirani James won the Men's 400 meters (and a silver to add to that in 2016), coming from a population of just over 100,000. Another standout on the top 10 list is another Caribbean country The Bahamas, with their 6 gold medals from sailing and athletics, and with a current population of less than 400,000 people.

When using this method to rank countries for the 2008 Olympic Games results, smaller countries tended to dominate the list, as it only required a medal or two for them to rank highly. Using the all-time list as done here provides a larger data set and gives a more accurate and representative result.

The two tables below show the ranking based on (1) gold medals won, and (2) total medals won.

Table: Top ranked teams based on GOLD MEDALS per million population

Jamaica is the country jumping into the top 10 after a successful 2016 Games.

Table: Top ranked teams based on TOTAL MEDALS per million population

The Caribbean is the place to be

As pointed out in several intelligent comments about the above results, I have come to realize that the figures above may not best represent per capita medals. The data does not account for the number of appearances of each country. For example, it is not fair to compare the total medal count of the UK who have appeared at all 28 Olympic Games with China, who have appeared only 10 times. A better analysis would be to base the analysis on the average number of medals won per appearance, not on the total medal count.

After crunching the numbers after the 2016 Olympics, the results are quite different to those above. We have listed only currently competing countries. If included, the East Germans would be the top ranked per capita medal winning country based on average medal counts, having produced a large number of gold medals relative to its population in its five appearances at the Olympics. There is no doubt that the East Germans had some talented athletes and a very well organized sports development program, though it is now known that systematic doping took place which would account an unfair boost in their medal count. Also considering it is no longer in existence as such, I am happy to ignore the East German results, which leave Grenada as the most successful country per capita.

The small nation of Grenada won its first medal, a gold, at the 2012 Olympics, in its eighth appearance at the Games. Finland was also put down a place by another Caribbean country The Bahamas, who have done well to win 6 golds in their 16 appearances.

Table: Top ranked teams based on AVERAGE GOLD MEDALS per million population

If included, the East German team would top this list, with 153 gold medals in five Olympic Games and an estimated population of 16.1 million, average gold medals per million population would be 1.90.

Table: Top ranked teams based on AVERAGE TOTAL MEDALS per million population

If included, the East German team would top this list, with 409 total medals in 5 Olympic Games and an estimated population of 16.1 million, average medals per million population would be 5.08. Bahamas has jumped up to top this list after the 2016 Olympics, mainly due to poor returns from Finland and Estonia. Grenada jumped into the top 10 too with a second medal to runner Kirani James.

Table Notes:

• The data includes all medals won at the summer Olympic Games (including 2016). The original medal list source: Wikipedia.
• The population data was sourced from the Wikipedia page: List_of_countries_by_population, which contained the most recently known (as of Aug 2016) population data.

Further Analysis?

Of course there are also some other issues with the current analysis. In most cases the most current population data is used for analysis here, even though many of the medals were won during earlier Olympics were the population would have been lower. The assumption is that the relative populations between countries is similar over time, but this is probably not always the case. This analysis also assumes an even distribution of medals over time, which is also not correct. Finland may historically be the best performing country per capita, but they may not currently be as successful as they have been in the past.

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Related Pages

• calculated lists based on medals per GDP.
• the complete medal list and population data
• 2018 Winter Olympic Games medal table per capita
• Medals per Country Size — comparing medals with country size (both size and population)
• a discussion of different ranking systems.
• medal tables from all Olympic Games
• about Olympic Medals

Comments

Old Comments

• I am a Statistician so here is my view on many points raised. (from Taylor Kavanagh, NZ, Sept 2012)
  1) the per-capita statistics above are highly erroneous as they only use 2 factors current population and total medals won. The current population has no relevance for many counties to the population that won medals at early Olympic Games.
  2) Factors such as number of medals available at each Olympics and number of countries participating and their populations then have not been considered. It was much easier to win medals at the early Olympics as there were a lot of medals available and far less countries competing for them.
  3) Team size is irrelevant. A country will qualify and send all athletes that they can. If a country of 10 million only qualifies 1 athlete and he wins a medal then the population of 10 million produced that 1 medal winner. A 100% success rate for that team is statistically meaningless.
  4) Per-capita calculations do not favor small countries. If the USA, China, India, Russia etc were sufficiently dominant they should win all the medals between them and no small countries should win anything. If a small country wins a medal against the odds they deserve to be recognized as achieving highly per capita.
  I am currently producing a spreadsheet that accounts for all relevant factors (population of each country at the date of each Olympics, number of countries represented and the total population represented at the Olympics, number of gold medals available. After completing the analysis on 13 of the Olympics so far the standings are as follows (for the number of times the allocated gold medals a country has won):
  FINLAND = 13.14 times their allocated gold medal haul
  NEW ZEALAND = 11.98 times their allocated gold medal haul
  SWEDEN = 6.8 times their allocated gold medal haul
  HUNGARY = 6.68 times their allocated gold medal haul
  AUSTRALIA = 3.25 times their allocated gold medal haul
  Based of more recent Olympic results, New Zealand is likely to take the top spot as in several recent Olympics Finland have won very few gold medals. However it is very clear that New Zealand and Finland are clearly the most consistent overachievers at the summer Olympics.
• Ayeah! HUNGARY IS SIMPLY THE BEST! Am sorry guys try harder :p (from Kati, 3 Sept 2012)
• Here's a point no one else has made. Per capita is actually slightly biased against larger countries. It seems fair but it isn't. Here's why. China is the most populous country, with 1,344 mill citizens. If any country with a population of less than 1/300th of china's = 4.5 million gets 1 gold medal, then to equal that country, china would need to get all the remaining 300 or so gold medals. However, there are around 80 different states with a population of less than 4.5 million. If ANY of these states gets a gold medal, then China can NEVER be number one in the rankings per capita. Fair enough you say, because to get 1 gold with only 4.5million people is the same as China getting 300 golds with 1344 million people. But look again. How many people actually had a shot to get the gold medal which beats China? ANYONE from ANY of the 80 states could have done it. It doesn't matter which country they come from so long as the total pop. size of the country is less than 4.5million. But the total population inside all the 80 small countries is a lot more than 4.5 million. It's about 121 million. Assume the 121 million only gets 1 gold medal between them. So 79 small countries come last, but 1 small country that has the gold medal beats china (and probably every other sizeable country) ... Another way to refute 'per capita'  is as follows: Divide the 121 million people up into 121 million separate countries. Then every single time a person out of the 121 million gets a gold medal, china would need to get 1344000000 gold medals to break even with that 'country' . (even though china's population is only about 11 times the 121 million, it has to get billions more medals to break even). So the more small countries there are, the less fair the 'per capita'  ranking is to larger countries.  That is why Grenada comes top.  It is nothing to do with Grenada per se.  It could have been Tuvalu, Nauru, Vanuatu, Bahrain, Belize, Lesotho, St.Kitts, Bahamas, Solomon islands, Comoros, Lichtenstein, or any other small country.
  add up all the people living in these countries and it becomes much more likely that at least ONE of those people will get a gold medal (and therefore send their country to the top of the rankings). (from Aaron, Aug 2012)
• Bizarre how people keep on arguing about statistics and rankings while someone places this comment: "Hitler was right about Aryans being the master race. The main Aryans come from Scandinavia and Finland, Sweden have the most total medals per capita" (from er, Aug 2012)
• The more athletes a nation sends to the games, the more medals can potentially be garnered. Since participation limits are not proportional to a nation's population, what is the point of counting medals per million population? Has anyone found a "medals per number of contestants" ranking table? This would be the ideal benchmark, but I haven't found the data analyzed in that way yet. (from Fred, 14 Aug 2012)
• New Zealand have won 6 golds for these games after the Eastern European drug cheat was disqualified. Where are the Scandinavian countries at these games? Must be something in the "water" (from Jonah Lomu, 14 Aug 2012)
• How about an analysis based on the countries in which each athlete raised. I'm not sure how you could gather the data to do this, but literally thousands of athletes are only able to compete due to the (often free) training they get in receive at American (for example) universities. I think of this particularly in track and field and basketball (conversely) Americans who travel to Europe to play soccer. (from ghoti, 13 Aug 2012)
• If you add up all the medals for Auszealand than they beat the rest of the world hands down and where is Finlands Rugby team? Just wait till sevens are in the Olympics. Gooooooo ANZAC!!!!! (from James Dure, Aug 2012)
• The results seem to show older established European countries rank higher than more recently developed countries like New Zealand and Australia, it would be interesting to see the results from say the last 50 years. Another point is that some of the smaller countries would have been heavily impacted around the two world wars, particularly New Zealand, whereas neutral countries were impacted less. (from Aaron, Aug 2012)
• NZ is consistently ahead of Australia. Does anything else matter? (from Raynz, Aug 2012)
• This is not accurate. Jamaica has a population of 2.7 million and has won 55 medals. Why is she not ranked in the top 10. (from Sonia, 11 Aug 2012)
  • reply: Jamaica is not far off the top 10. They have 55 medals in total, 15 gold. (ed.)
• Hungary is doing well in the capita table as on the normal ranking. 8 gold medals. Congratulation!!! (from Zsolt, Aug 2012)
• It would be interesting to split out the results between Summer and Winter. Typically the Scandinavians do very well in Winter while the Americans and Australians to better in Summer. Also, the rules of the games tend to benefit smaller countries -- US might well have gotten another overall medal in woman's gymnastics this year if their arguably strongest competitor who would have qualified easily in any other country hadn't been left out of the finals because 2 other Americans beat her in the prelims.  While that is an extreme example, each country is limited in how many contestants they can send to each event and mishaps taking out top competitors are not that uncommon. (from Tom, 11 Aug 2012)
• U did great job bt i tink its not adviceable to determine the best Olympic team by population cos we can see small or larger country whom could win many medals of made them the best country per that year. So i suggest they should pick the best team from gold medals per that year of any country that perform excellent. Thanks. U re great wt ur analysis (from Awojobi kehinde, Aug 2012)
• I teach 8th grade math, and LOVE number crunching! Great stuff you've got here! I do similar things sometimes myself to prove points in sports debates, but have never actually created a page for any of it. Speaking as someone born in Germany, but now holding US citizenship and teaching in Texas, I must say I find it interesting that European countries absolutely dominate that list. What's even more interesting though is which European countries. The countries normally associated as being powerhouses in football (soccer as it's called here in the USA) are noticeably absent from the top ranks. The likes of Germany, England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands etc didn't make the list which leads me to believe that there's likely a higher proportion of young athletes in those nations pursuing football than other sports. Meanwhile, the European nations making the top flight of Olympic competition, as illustrated above, are punching bags on the European football (soccer) scene. Hence, youngsters in those countries are probably more likely to pursue other sports than they would in the strong footballing nations. Just conjecturing. (from Volkmar, 10 Aug 2012)
  • In reply to Volkmar's conjecture, to be successful on the medals per capita table it helps to have a small population (a Communist Government probably also helped, especially in the case of the 3 most populous countries on the above list, East Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria). Being European helped because it tended to mean you had been taking part for longer and with more support money from a wealthier economy. This will probably change as small independent Caribbean islands start to build up more sprint medals - the Bahamas are already there, and Grenada will top the table once you include 2012 medals (and provided you still leave out Liechtenstein's Winter medals). In contrast powerhouses in soccer, (arguably) the world's most popular team sport, unsurprisingly tend to have much larger populations, with the arguable exception of Portugal, and the difficult to explain exception of Uruguay. Another interesting exception is New Zealand, which is not European, has a small population, and makes it onto this table, yet also manages to be the world's Number 1 powerhouse in the team sport of Rugby Union, a position it has maintained for about a century (an incomplete explanation is that Rugby is not nearly as widely played as soccer). Tragi-comically this 'low population helps on this table' observation does nothing to explain why Finland does about 10 times better on this table than my own country (Ireland) despite Finland having the apparent disadvantage of a slightly larger population :( :( :(  :) :) :) (from Theloh Slobus, 11 Aug 2012)
• Grenada now look set for the top end of the "average gold medals per million population" table based on this year's single gold medal alone (after competing at 8 Olympics, and, crucially, having a population of just 100,000 people, their score comes to about 1.25 gold medals per million people per Olympics). (from Paddy, 10 Aug 2012)
• Australia this year have 384 participants, and China only 384, Italy 288! I'm  Australian, I am tired of the glory and money that this nation give away, (and I'm not the only one) free to children who never even appear in the vicinity of the Olympic Games. Money that can be use for the family, (usually single mother)  that live literally in the  street, and missing bed in the hospital, and lack of doctor. I'm tired of children become bully because schools give them away everything and do not even have any culture at all, a mass of ignorant bully children feed with the "hope" that one day they will win a gold medal and never happen.  Many Australians should start to state fact and truth if we want a grown up nation, sport is fine if is in balance with the needed of the rest of the population. (from Tina, 10 Aug 2012)
• If you include Winter medals, then Liechtenstein (population 33,000 in the 2000 census, estimated at 36,000 by 2011) with 2 Gold, 2 Silver, and 5 Bronze, all in Alpine skiing, is by far the most successful Olympic nation with about 60 golds and about 270 medals per million people, making it about 50 times more successful than East Germany and about 100 times more successful than Finland, though almost nobody seems to know this. The BBC 2012 Commentary as they marched by in the opening ceremony was basically 'Liechtenstein have never won any medals in the Summer Olympics', which is arguably farcical ignorance from the official Olympic broadcaster (and seemingly almost everybody else) about what is in one sense the most successful Olympic country of all (even if nobody knows this, possibly because the self-declared Land Of The Free would perhaps prefer if nobody was too free to challenge its own claim to being the most successful Olympic country of all). Wikipedia's rules against 'original research' probably prevent me from publishing any of this on Wikipedia, though they perhaps don't prevent any other readers of this website from publishing it on Wikipedia, and quoting this website as their source. My own source is in theory Wikipedia's all-time Olympic Medals table, plus Wikipedia's articles on the population of various countries - though my real source is mostly my memory of watching on TV as a young woman representing Liechtenstein won those two golds in under a week back in the 1970s. (from Theloh Slobus, 10 Aug 2012)
• It would be more interesting to see the statistics only from 1992 onward, too many countries appeared and disappeared before that. Not to mention the drastically different amount of medals available. The average number of gold medals per summer Olympics is about 173 and we have 300+ this year. (from Harri, Aug 2012)
• In order to match East Germany in average medals per capita, China would have had to win over 20000 gold medals and over 54000 total medals in just 8 summer Olympics. I'm fairly certain there weren't even that many medals to win. This analysis assumes that the ability to win medals increases linearly with population, which is impossible. (from Pete, Aug 2012)
• Did you include the GB countries separately also? Or England, , , Wales? Pretty sure Scotland would be high up your table. (from robbie hendry, 8 Aug 2012)
• Another comparison could be made, if one deletes with each country the most successful sport. For example, at this moment (6th aug) London-Olympics 2012, USA has 60 medals, however 30 medals are won in 1 sport (swimming), which indicates, that in the wide variety of sports, the overall performance of USA is very average/mediocre(310 million people!!! & 1 of the richest countries in the world) (from J. Meekma, 6 Aug 2012)
• Interesting. But things are really more complicated than just a simple ranking by number of medals. If nobody has mentioned, the analysis should be corrected by the number of athletes participating PER COUNTRY in each sport. For example (simplified): there could be 5 chinese, 3 germans, 1 japanese, and the gold, silver and bronze go to the japanese, german and chinese in this order. Clearly, the japanese win counts more than all the 5 chinese, and the 3 germans. This is indeed the kind of analysis that must be done: To correct for the number of athletes participating PER COUNTRY, and PER SPORT. China is huge, they can send hordes of athletes to the Olympics, but Cuba, Finland, or even Brasil send less. Conclusions could then be startling. (from Maxei, 6 Aug 2012)
• What most just will not acknowledge is the regularity of the type of countries that rank highest (not considering the Bahamas). They are essentially countries that have been marked by high levels of social equality and public sponsorship of sport. Makes you think, doesn't it? (from John of God, Aug 2012)
• NZ and Australia are special cases as their populations have changed significantly and disproportionately and are therefore disadvantaged by using current population statistics. Also as shown on your 2008 statistics Australia is ranked 5th and is the only reasonably large population ranking well. (from Mike, Aug 2012)
• Yes, ignore all results of East Germany. That would make your silly statistics more true! We in the West have not doped at all. We are good - they are evil. OM (from P. Foster, 6 Aug 2012)
• Look at recent medal tables though in recent years Scandinavia sucks. So whatever they had they lost. (from Graham Higgins, Aug 2012)
  • I'd disagree with your evaluation of Scandinavia's Olympic performance, at least based on this year.  Finland may not have won any medals this year yet, but Denmark is one of the top four performers per capita (alongside Jamaica, New Zealand, and Slovenia), while Sweden and Norway are doing OK as well. (from Paddy, 6 Aug 2012)
• Interesting analysis.  Based on results at the halfway mark of the 2012 Olympics, however, the table leaders should watch their backs ... no medals yet for Finland, Estonia or the Bahamas, but Sweden has three silvers while Hungary has two golds, a silver, and two bronzes. (from Paddy, Aug 2012)
• The larger the country the less decentralized it is. The United States and China could never have a higher ratio than the smaller number of countries on this list, especially when you consider how many niche sports here are in the Olympics? How many of the best American athletes, for example, play football and baseball. Two sports that are not in the Olympics but are multi-mega billion dollar a year leagues (NFL, MLB). The US can dominate in a sport like basketball that has massive popularity around the world but that meddle still only counts as much as a victory in synchronized swimming. Larger countries usually means more individuals with less access to the coaching and training necessary to become great in a particular event. This is particularly true with highly diversified economies like the US. An example I'll give is when looking at television rating for sporting events. New York City is by almost any measurement a terrific, top-tier sports team. But it will never pull in as high a ratings share for, say, an NFL game as a Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Kansas City, New Orleans, etc, mostly because of its size and diversified economy. You'll get the big "whole" numbers but not the percentages and per-capita numbers that we fixate on. (from Erik W., 6 Aug 2012)
• A per capita evens the playing field a bit, but not entirely. The large countries still have advantages that the smaller countries don't. The bigger countries get a huge number of relay medals every Olympics. If for example the Scandinavian countries were one country together with Australia and NZ then just based on the swimmers they already have they would be extremely strong in all swimming relays for example. So a better measure would probably be to also take away all those relay events which are mostly a function of country size to. (from Alexander, 3 Aug 2012)
• another important factor that is not taken into consideration is the number of Olympic Games attended. this could have a huge impact on your calculations. (from Neil, 3 Aug 2012)
  • reply: Yes, I agree, and I have updated this article to include analysis based on average medals per the number of appearances at the Olympics.
• I think you should compare static between medals / all time number of athletes. because i don't think U.S.A. example can have 1:1 ratio of athletes in Olympic Games as we little countries. Please correct me if I'm wrong. (from Markus Makkonen, Aug 2012)
  • Ignorant form lol. Just admit it, the USA rules. (from Machine, Aug 2012)
  • I think that this raises a really good question. How many medals would China or even the US or Russia have to win to have the same level of medals per capita? Let us say that the US has 300 million people, in order to achieve the same total medals per million it would have had to won over 16,000 medals. I don't know if there are that many total medals that could have possibly been won. I do know that the big countries had the per capita medal counts that smaller countries have or even came close they would be really boring to watch because China, India and the US would win them all. (from Eric, Aug 2012)
• In relation to New Zealand's medal count, in both 1908 & 1912 New Zealand & Australia sent combined teams to the Olympics. New Zealand athletes won 1 bronze in both 1908 & 1912 and 0.25 of a gold in 1912 (1 Kiwi & 3 Aussies in the 4x200 freestyle relay). You have not added these in to your count. (from Gordon Fidler, Aug 2012)
• Just as a note New Zealand only started to compete in 1920. (from Casey, Aug 2012)
• It's also worth noting that Hungary, for example, was not allowed to compete in the 1920 Olympics. The irony is that Budapest won the right to host the Olympics that year, but WW1 and the Versailles Treaty changed things. The country also lost out on the Olympics in Los Angeles in 1980, due to the Soviet-imposed blockade. (from Andras, July 2012)
• NOTE: the top countries Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway borders to each other ... would that point to that the area has the best sportsmen in the world? gotta be something in the water =P (from hexy, July 2012)
• I like your tables with per capita and per GDP. I would like to know if it is normalized by current Population and Current GDP If you compute an ranking for All time. It needs to be computed using the GDP and Population at that Olympic year and integrated over the years that country Participated. China has participated for only 8 Olympics, while USA for 25.  So for an all-time listing you need some average. Then Soviet Union and East Germany will not come as N/A since they had a population at that time. Also a country with a currently depressed GDP like Zimbabwe will not come high since they had a higher GDP in past. I know it is a lot of work, but once the database is setup with past GDP and Population estimates, computing the correct index is not difficult to program. (from Dr Kavan  Ratnatunga, July 2012) -
  • reply: I agree, the data analysis need more work, which won't be happening just now. (Rob, Topend Sports)
• What about a weather correction? Surely Ireland would then have to figure?! (from Jim, July 2012)
• This isn't quite accurate as it hasn't taken into account changes in population over the years. New Zealand population is based on today's figures. For most of Olympic history it has been under 3 million. Finland's probably has been constantly about 5 million. (from Dan, July 2012)
  • Reply: yes, you are right, only the most recent figures for population were used in the above calculations, even though population levels have changed over time. The assumption is that the proportion is similar for each country, but this is probably not always the case as you point out. (Rob, topendsports)
• Being an Estonian I cannot help but have to point out that if Estonian athletes' medals from the Soviet period were included, the total tally would be 27-22-27. A few of these medals came in team sports with the USSR team, not in individual events but nevertheless the official data misses about half of the medals. (from Lynx, July 2012)
• USA not in the Top 10? That won't do. Must fudge the numbers some more. (from Rick, July 2012)
• The most golds per capita is down as Finland - not New Zealand as said during the 2012 Opening Ceremony (from Jerry Lewis, July 27, 2012)
  • Pretty sure that this is including the Winter Olympics, and the statistic about New Zealand referred to in the opening ceremony is in fact only the summer games. (from John Jameson, Aug 2012)
  • reply: this list IS for the summer Olympics. Finland have won many of their 101 Summer Olympics gold medals in track and field (48) and also wrestling (26). (from Rob, Topend Sports, Aug 3 2012)
  • The comment during the BBC opening ceremony coverage re. NZ being top of the per capita table was only a guess by one of the commentators, it wasn't confirmed. (from C Hughes, 5 Aug 2012)
  • reply: NZ and Australia are often quoted as being the best performers per capita, though the analysis above does not confirm this :( (from Rob, Topend Sports, Aug 5 2012)
  • I think again you have to look to a previous comments NZs population didn't reach 3 million until 1976 as opposed to Finland who exceeded this in 1913. I believe if other factors like this were measured there may be some truth in Jerry's quick slip of tongue. (from Hales, 10 Aug 2012)
  • Yes NZ and Australia have both had relatively high population growth over the last 30 years so population at each Olympics needs to be factored ... (from Big Bad Bill, 11 Aug 2012)