Who won the Olympics? United State? China? No. San Marino won in Tokyo 2020. Or maybe the Netherlands. The medal table for the games just completed gives way to analyzes and interpretations, which, on the basis of not only sports criteria, give different ratings to those expressed by tracks, fields, swimming pools and platforms.
For example, if we consider the demographic parameter and the ratio between population and medals, San Marino flies to the top which – with its population of 33,000 – manages to bring silver, two bronze and leaves behind, among the ‘small competitions’. Granada, Bermuda and the Bahamas. If the field is limited to countries with populations over 1 million, the best results – in terms of podium/population ratio – belong to New Zealand, which leaves Japan with 7 golds, 6 silvers and 7 bronzes. The medal table giants are lost in the low and the very low end of the athletic demographic. Russia is past 40th, the United States 54th, and China up to 77th.
Is it Italy? The Azores, returning from a record expedition with ten golds and 40 medals, are tenths in the traditional medal table. The looting, compared to about 60 million people, turns out to be the 35th “without shame and without praise.” The mechanism penalizes countries like India, Nigeria and Mexico that leave Tokyo with little to no metal. On the contrary, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary and Denmark find themselves very high in the ranking. Yes, but how would the top ten in the medal table change if population was a criterion for evaluation? The transformation was achieved with the Netherlands on top of the world ahead of Australia and the United Kingdom. Italy, in fourth place, will perform better than Japan and France. For Russia, Germany, the United States and China consolation last 4 places.
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