2012 Olympics GDP Adjusted Medals Table
The 2012 Summer Olympic Games being held in London are finally upon us. After a unique and entertaining opening ceremony the athletes now get the chance to reap the reward of years of training by participating in and perhaps excelling in the greatest multinational sporting event of all. FlagAndMap applauds all participants and congratulates the medal winners. At the same time we will have a little fun by trying to determine which nation might be said to be performing best given a level playing field – by which we mean after adjustment is made for the differing resources they have at their disposal. This is achieved by assessing the value of medals won and adjusting that value according to national GDP. We’ll skip the details and merely note that our algorithm is designed to minimize the spread of results and maximize the number of nations that have a chance of winning.
It’s early days yet so our 2012 Olympics GDP Adjusted Performance Ranking is looking a little lean but already we can see the benefit of a more level playing field. China’s early haul of 4 golds is impressive but Italy places above them with only 2 golds by virtue of being a smaller nation with a lower overall GDP, yet they in turn are pipped by even less wealthy Kazakhstan thanks to Vinokourov’s gold in the cycling road race. We’ll be updating this table at the end of every day so check in again to see how your country is performing.