The Olympic podium usually has the same protagonists.
The US and China have always been among the top three since Sydney, accompanied first by Russia and since London 2012 by the United Kingdom.
These powers are large and relatively rich countries, but there are also small miracles: the Bahamas has 390,000 inhabitants - it is like Albacete - and has won 10 medals, the same as Portugal, which has 25 times more population.
The graph represents the total of medals that each country has achieved in an Olympic Games from Sydney to Tokyo (as of August 5), in absolute and per million inhabitants.
Above are the countries with the most medals, starting with the US (616), China (455) and Russia (418), followed by the UK (290), Germany (266), Australia (257) and France (216).
Spain appears in position 15 (with 96).
On the right, the countries with the most metals per inhabitant stand out, such as the Bahamas (29 per million), Jamaica (20) or New Zealand (16), which multiply by up to 15 those achieved by Spaniards, Austrians or Americans (2).
Other successful countries for its size are Australia (12), Slovenia (11), Cuba (11), Estonia (10), Denmark (9.5) or Hungary (9). Followed by a second group with many Europeans, from Croatia (8.5), Norway (8), Netherlands (8), Belarus (7), Lithuania (7) or Latvia (6.5) and even Switzerland (6) , Sweden (5), Czech Republic (5), Bulgaria (5) or Slovakia (5). They are relatively small countries - which is an advantage because they have more athletes in proportion - with overrepresentation of Nordics and former Soviet and Yugoslav republics. But they also meet another pattern: they are relatively wealthy.
Wealth matters in the medal table.
That is why the European countries stand out (in red) clearly over the African (blue).
The secret to achieving many medals is having potential athletes and then putting resources into turning that potential into athletic performance.
It is no coincidence that Norway has had 37 medals since 2000 and Togo only one, even if they are the same size, because Norway is 50 times richer.
To see this relationship we have prepared the following graph, with the medals and the GDP of each country.
The graph shows that the countries with the highest GDP per capita win more Olympic medals per inhabitant.
But there are exceptional cases.
Kenya and Ethiopia.
With 61 and 41 medals from Sydney, the two countries achieve far more metals than correspond to their size and poverty.
They have always achieved them in medium and long distance athletics, with stars like Tirunesh Dibaba or Eliud Kipchoge.
The old Soviets.
Estonia, Hungary, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova also stand out.
Lithuania, for example, has 22 medals, the same as Belgium, which is richer and three times larger.
Australia and New Zealand.
The two countries are among the best in medals per capita.
Australia is the only one with more than 20 million that achieves 10 medals per million (total 257, while Spain does not reach 100 with twice the number of people).
Northern Europe.
Other countries that stand out among the richest are Denmark (9 per million), Norway (7.5) and the Netherlands (7).
The Dutch are only 16 million but they add 122 medals from Sydney, ahead of much more populated countries such as Canada (103) or Poland (63), and close to Italy (183), four times larger.
Some Caribbeans.
Many countries in the region excel in athletics and have a lot of metals for their size: Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and the Bahamas have achieved 10, 18 and 29 medals per million inhabitants.
Bahamians number about 400,000, but they have 10 medals, almost as many as Portugal, which is 100 times bigger.
Jamaica has 53 metals with 3 million inhabitants, pulverizing countries of similar size such as Uruguay (1), Panama (1) or Costa Rica (2).
Cuba.
On the island they have achieved 123 medals with 11 million inhabitants (11 per million). For comparison, countries of similar size such as Chile or Tunisia only have 5 and 9 medals. It is ahead of medium, rich and successful countries, such as the Netherlands (8 per million) or Sweden (5).
Being very big is worse.
The most populated countries find it difficult to achieve many medals per inhabitant, because they do not send all the athletes that correspond to them by population (if not, one in 5 would be Chinese).
For example, Ireland has 125 athletes (with 4.5 million inhabitants), by 336 from Spain (47 million) and 423 from China (1,389).
Among the countries with more than 100 million inhabitants, those that win the most medals are Russia (2.9 per million), USA (2), Japan (1.5), Brazil (0.5) and China (0.3) .
Other Asian and African giants do worse, such as Indonesia (0.1), Nigeria (0.1) and India (0.01), which has 17 metals for 1.2 billion people.
The dominators by sports and events
There are countries that shine spectacularly in some sports.
For example, Belarus has won 20% of all medals in rhythmic gymnastics, 100 times more than those corresponding to its population (0.15%).
Below we show the highlighted countries (it is useful to order the table by percentage of medals achieved or by the ratio of that percentage to its population).
Other spectacular domains are the Netherlands in hockey, where they have won 8 out of 10 possible medals - no more than two teams can appear - or those of Switzerland in triathlon, Denmark in badminton, Georgia in wrestling, Cuba in boxing and New Zealand rowing and sailing.
There are also tests with brutal domains from large countries.
This is what happens with Russia in rhythmic gymnastics (it has won almost half of the medals) or China in table tennis (57%).
But also with Brazil in beach volleyball, where it has 37% of medals presenting two couples, or with the USA in basketball, which has achieved all possible medals since Sydney (33%), always taking gold in men and women, except in 2004.
Spain stands out in tennis (where it has won 10 times more medals than it receives per population), in canoeing (7), sailing (6), cycling (6) and taekwondo (5).
The two most spectacular countries in athletics are the Bahamas and Jamaica, which achieve 100 to 200 times more medals than their size.
But its performance is even more astonishing in some specific tests.
It is what the penultimate table collects.
The Bahamas has achieved 4 out of 5 possible medals in the men's 4x400, which is 4,000 times more than a country that does not represent even 0.01% of the world's population should win.
Jamaica sweeps many speed events, from 100 to 400 meters, but the most impressive thing is the dominance of its athletes in the women's 100 meters: they have achieved 67% of the medals from Sydney, although the country does not represent even 0, 05% of the world population.
In Tokyo they won gold, silver and bronze.
The success of the hosts
Another pattern on the medal table is the success of the host country, which almost always increases its metal production.
This is how it was in Barcelona 1992, when Spain achieved 22 medals, many more than ever before, and more than ever since.
Since that year, all the organizers have had a milestone of medals in their Games, with the exception of the USA with Atlanta 1996.
Why is this happening?
There are different explanations.
In general, it is known that playing at home offers an advantage in many sports, due to the support of the public, due to familiarity with the environment, to avoid
jet lag,
or because the referees are more favorable.
Basketball referees penalize visitors more fouls and soccer referees draw more cards from them.
Another advantage of the hosts is that they present more athletes, which increases the possibility of winning a lucky medal.
According to FiveThirtyEight, the organizers bring in about 200 extra athletes, as did Spain in 1992 (went from 229 to 422) or Great Britain in 2012 (from 304 to 530).
But another key is again the money.
Organizers tend to invest more resources in their athletes in the years before the Games, when you already know that they will be in your country.
And that investment seems to pay off.
One sign is what happens at the Games after which a country has hosted, when the previous host no longer has a field advantage or can feature more athletes, but the result is often still better, as seen after Barcelona, Sydney or London.
There is an award to the host country that seems to last beyond its Games.
Methodology
.
The medal data for each country in each Olympic event has been obtained from Wikipedia.
The data on the evolution of population and GDP per capita come from OurWorldInData (those for Cuba are from the World Bank).
GDP is adjusted for inflation to 2011 dollars. In the first two graphs, population and GDP are the average since 2000.
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