Saturday, August 23, 2008

All Hail Jamaica!

Last night Mrs. Angus and I were out to dinner at a friend's house. Our lovely hostess (originally from Hong Kong) expressed concern about what country would "win the Olympics". Specifically she was looking for the best metric with which to argue that China had "won".

I immediately nominated Jamaica as the winner based on either total medals or gold medals per capita (hmmm, I may not get invited back there again eh?)!

Turns out that was exactly right as you can see here. Jamaica also "wins" based on gold medals or total medals per $ of GNP as well. I believe that all 11 of Jamaica's medals came in track and field (as bobsledding is a winter olympic sport).

That is truly an incredible achievement.

4 comments:

Tim Worstall said...

Sigh, people do keep getting this wrong.

This Olypmics, as all before them, have been won by the British Empire. As it should be of course: we've won over 35% of all the Olympic medals ever awarded.

Shawn said...

sadly, "kicking snooty asses*" is not yet a sanctioned sport, despite its daily occurrence in middle schools and academic halls.



*and then become fast friends

Shawn said...

incidentally...how's that adsense income working out for you, timmo?

Anonymous said...

Wait a minute. If you put all the ex-Soviet countries together you get more medals than China and US. So the problem maybe is that there are quotas. By breaking up into smaller units the Soviet Union can send more athletes to the Olympics. Is that so?