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Shock news - Jamaica tops Rio Olympics medal table with China and USA at the bottom.

Jamaica tops the gold medal table, Uzbekistan enters the top ten and China and USA fall to the bottom.


Analysis of the top 21 gold medal winning countries by www.EconomicsRevealed.co.uk reveals that once the gold medal places are re-adjusted in order to take into account the relative economic size of each country then Jamaica becomes the surprise winner and the USA and China falls to the bottom of the table.

It seems that money cannot buy you success at the Olympics.

Economist, Nick Langston-Able (Associate Lecturer at a leading UK university) analysed the gold medal results and compared them to the GDP of each country (GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product and is a standard measure of a country's economic size as it measures the output of all goods and services over a year).

The surprise result sees Jamaica as the most successful country in comparison to its economic size with Croatia in second place and Kenya coming in third.  Uzbekistan becomes a surprise entrant in at number eight in the table.

The large economies of USA and China find themselves at the bottom of the table with Team GB finishing in the number 12 spot.

Economist, Nick Langston-Able who carried out the research commented:

"Jamaica has a relatively small GDP and would not be regarded as a rich country but it has put in an excellent performance despite this.

"In terms of economic size, the UK is over 200 times bigger than Jamaica but only achieved three and a half times as many gold medals.

"The economy of the USA is over 1200 times bigger than Jamaica but the USA's medal haul does not reflect that.

"The relatively poorest country on the list is Jamaica and they have done brilliantly coming top of this revised medal table.

"Team GB have come a creditable tenth, just beneath Netherlands.

"It seems that perhaps money can't buy you success."

Countries with relatively large GDPs which did not even make it into the top 21 included India, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey.



Here are the full results of the top 21 gold medal winning countries when adjusted for GDP:



CountryGold MedalsGDP (billions of dollars)GDP per medal (billions of dollars)
Jamaica6142
Croatia54910
Kenya66311
Hungary812115
Cuba57816
Uzbekistan46717
New Zealand417444
Russia19132670
Netherlands875394
GB272849106
South Korea91378153
Australia81340168
Spain71199171
Germany173356197
Italy81815227
France102422242
Brazil71775254
Japan124123344
Canada41551388
USA4617946390
China2610866418




Further analysis has also been done looking at gold medal performance in comparison to the size of each country's population.   See here.

Shock news - Jamaica tops gold medal table with USA and China at the bottom.

Jamaica tops the gold medal table, Uzbekistan enters the top ten and China and USA fall to the bottom.


Analysis of the top 21 gold medal winning countries by www.EconomicsRevealed.co.uk reveals that once the gold medal places are re-adjusted in order to take into account the relative economic size of each country then Jamaica becomes the surprise winner and the USA and China falls to the bottom of the table.

It seems that money cannot buy you success at the Olympics.

Economist, Nick Langston-Able (Associate Lecturer at a leading UK university) analysed the gold medal results and compared them to the GDP of each country (GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product and is a standard measure of a country's economic size as it measures the output of all goods and services over a year).

The surprise result sees Jamaica as the most successful country in comparison to its economic size with Croatia in second place and Kenya coming in third.  Uzbekistan becomes a surprise entrant in at number eight in the table.

The large economies of USA and China find themselves at the bottom of the table with Team GB finishing in the number 12 spot.

Economist, Nick Langston-Able who carried out the research commented:

"Jamaica has a relatively small GDP and would not be regarded as a rich country but it has put in an excellent performance despite this.

"In terms of economic size, the UK is over 200 times bigger than Jamaica but only achieved three and a half times as many gold medals.

"The economy of the USA is over 1200 times bigger than Jamaica but the USA's medal haul does not reflect that.

"The relatively poorest country on the list is Jamaica and they have done brilliantly coming top of this revised medal table.

"Team GB have come a creditable tenth, just beneath Netherlands.

"It seems that perhaps money can't buy you success."

Countries with relatively large GDPs which did not even make it into the top 21 included India, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey.



Here are the full results of the top 21 gold medal winning countries when adjusted for GDP:



Country Gold Medals GDP (billions of dollars) GDP per medal (billions of dollars)
Jamaica 6 14 2
Croatia 5 49 10
Kenya 6 63 11
Hungary 8 121 15
Cuba 5 78 16
Uzbekistan 4 67 17
New Zealand 4 174 44
Russia 19 1326 70
Netherlands 8 753 94
GB 27 2849 106
South Korea 9 1378 153
Australia 8 1340 168
Spain 7 1199 171
Germany 17 3356 197
Italy 8 1815 227
France 10 2422 242
Brazil 7 1775 254
Japan 12 4123 344
Canada 4 1551 388
USA 46 17946 390
China 26 10866 418




Further analysis has also been done looking at gold medal performance in comparison to the size of each country's population.   See here.

Shock news - Jamaica tops gold medal table for Rio Olympics with TeamGB finishing seventh.

Jamaica tops the table, Team GB finish seventh with China in last place.


Analysis of the top 21 gold medal winning countries by www.EconomicsRevealed.co.uk reveals that once the gold medal places are re-adjusted in order to take into account the relative size of each country then Jamaica becomes the clear winner with 1 gold medal per 500,000 citizens.

The surprise result sees Croatia finishing second in the table with 1 gold medal per 800,000 citizens and Hungary finishing third with 1 gold medal per 1.3 million citizens.

New Zealanders will be excited to find themselves in joint third place, also with 1 gold medal per 1.3 million citizens.

In a disappointing result, China find itself at number 21 in the top 21 countries with 1 medal per 53.8 million citizens.

Economist, Nick Langston-Able (Associate Lecturer at a leading UK university) who carried out the research commented:

"It is fascinating to look at how the gold medal performance of different countries changes once you take into account the relative populations of those countries.

"Jamaica has performed brilliantly- for every 500,000 people in Jamaica there is a gold medal winner.

"The performance of China, with its population of 1.4 billion looks less impressive with a gold medal winner for every 53.8 million people.

"If population and gold medals were directly linked then China should have one over 100 times more gold medals than Jamaica did and around 20 times more than Team GB did.

"So Team GB can still be very proud but I would imagine the Kiwis will take some satisfaction from this result!"

Countries with relatively large populations which did not feature in this table and so have very much under-performed include India, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey.


Here are the full results of the top 21 gold medal winning countries when adjusted for population size:

Country Gold Medals Population (millions) Population per medal (millions)
Jamaica 6 3 0.5
Croatia 5 4 0.8
New Zealand 4 5 1.3
Hungary 8 10 1.3
Netherlands 8 17 2.1
Cuba 5 11 2.2
GB 27 65 2.4
Australia 8 24 3.0
Germany 17 82 4.8
South Korea 9 51 5.7
France 10 65 6.5
Spain 7 46 6.6
USA 46 324 7.0
Kenya 6 44 7.3
Italy 8 61 7.6
Russia 19 147 7.7
Uzbekistan 4 32 8.0
Canada 4 37 9.3
Japan 12 127 10.6
Brazil 7 207 29.6
China 26 1,400 53.8


Further analysis has also been done looking at gold medal performance in comparison to the size of each country's GDP (Gross Domestic Product - the amount each country produces in a year and a common measurement of the economic size of a country).  See here.