There are a few little errors in the Symworld data. For example, they have got the Dominican Republic’s population out by a factor of 10 (their figure is too small), and so ranked them too high. Also, they have a very large estimate of Zimbabwe’s GDP (at least compared to the World Bank or the CIA World Factbook), which is why they don’t have Zimbabwe on top of the GDP rankings. Of course, this place is nothing to celebrate as it just reflects the parlous state of their economy!

My starting point in exploring this data was to think about return on investment as there is no doubt that Australia spends a lot on sport. Of course getting that sort of data across countries is extremely difficult and, as you point out, even then other problems would arise such as where athletes trained.

As you say though, all in all Australia and New Zealand do perform extremely well. Of course our media do seem to be a little upset that with the UK starting to spend money on sport that they are now doing much better than in the last few Games. Once they have the host boost in 2012, there’s no telling how well they’ll do, so we need to brace ourselves in preparation for the resurgent Britons!

I read recently that the average Australian taxpayer spend per medal is approx 17.3 million dollars (AUD) and the NZ taxpayer spend per medal is approx 10 million (NZD) which is, balanced for currency difference, a factor of 2:1 (which sounds about right).

However I don’t think taxpayer spend (or for that matter GDP) is a fair yardstick. There would surely be economies of scale, and it taxpayer $ doesn’t take into account *actual* per-athlete spend. If you have 1,000 athletes who have $10,000 spent on of them, and between them they get 1 gold, you spent $10million on that gold….but only $10k per athlete.

As Jon mentioned above, there should be also a reference to the country the athlete trains in, as there are numerous athletes who reap the benefits of top-line competition in other countries.

Finally, the figure fails to take into account athlete endorsement and sponsorship. A top athlete from Kenya is hardly likely to garner the same income as Mr Phelps or Ms Rice will, and I feel this is a huge contributory factor.

I am immensely proud that NZ can mix it with the world – c’mon, man, we are a small country with a small economy way out the arse-end of nowhere – and think Australia can be justifiably proud of its achievements as well. I also think that the gap between the top 8 or so countries and the rest of the world continues to grow, and that’s sad, because the focus has moved away from the joy of the sporting contest to the self-satisfaction of dominating the medal table. That’s sport in the modern age, I guess.

Los Juegos han terminado. Con la tradicional clasificación del medallero, las grandes potencias suelen encabezarlo. Pero ¿qué pasaría si hacemos la clasificación en términos relativos, de medallas en relación a la población o el P.I.B. del paí…