Is Australia the most successful country at the Olympics on a per capita basis?

Question

ie. 25 medals so far and a population of 21 million people.

Answer 1

Australia ranks very highly, but on a per capita basis even smaller populations have an opportunity to outrank Australia by winning fewer medals.

In Gold medals only Australia came

3rd in 2004

5th in 2000

7th in 1996

Answer 2

Australia with a population of 21 million seems to punch way above our weight when it comes to sport. A quick scan of world poplations per country sees some interesting facts from wikipedia..with countries around the same as Australia not even rating in the medals??

We seem to be more closely aligned with countries of a similar standard of living such as UK, Korea, Italy etc. More to do with how much the government puts into sport than the population. Also it may have something to do with quality of life and amount of leisure time we have, to even have the time to play sports. We are indeed a lucky country..I think the results we see in sports across the Globe reflects this fact. Don,t forget we dominate and have done so in many sports which are not covered by the Olympics such as cricket, rugby league, lawn bowls, surfing to name just a few.

cheers

49 Republic of China (Taiwan)[4] 22,990,000 April 30, 2008 0.34% Official National Statistics Taiwan estimate

50 Yemen 22,389,000 0.34% UN estimate

51 Romania 21,438,000 0.32% UN estimate

52 Mozambique 21,397,000 0.32% UN estimate

53 Australia[5] 21,394,309 August 16, 2008 0.32% Official Australian Population clock

54 Syria 19,929,000 0.3% UN estimate

55 Madagascar 19,683,000 0.3% UN estimate

56 Sri Lanka 19,299,000 0.29% UN estimate

57 Côte d'Ivoire 19,262,000 0.29% UN estimate

58 Cameroon 18,549,000 0.28% UN estimate

59 Angola 17,024,000

Answer 3

Yes, i agree, australia's culture evolves around sport

Answer 4

usa person here.wow u only have 21 million?never really thought about it but asumed it was more.i guess i might have to say yes

Answer 5

Watch out for malicious rumour spreader "Jessica Rabbit" who will probably answer this and accuse you of hating America or something dumb like that.

Not sure about per capita but if you look at this table you will see we were third most successful based on population, in Athens 2004.

http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/...

Answer 6

That's only because we spend far too much money & put too much emphasis on sport.

...& if those figures are correct, they prove my point

Answer 7

Last Olympics we got 17 gold medals.

Its becuase in Australia the government puts our hard earned tax dollar into important things like rowing, swimming and cycling, instead of non-important useless things like hospitals and education.

Answer 8

Yes all we need now is to get some those young Aboriginal kids to stick it out in athletics they always won everything when I went to school so they have the pace they just need the motivation to go with it.