Photos courtesy of Standard Sports Photos
The empty seats in the photo above symbolize that the 2012 Olympic Games are over. The closing ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympics were held last night, and the final medal counts are in. Eighty-five countries received a total of 962 medals. What are the final standings?
Our Scoring System
In our unique scoring system, a gold medal is awarded 3 points, silver 2 points and bronze 1 point. Then we add up the total number of points for each country. Ideally, we would award fewer points 4th place and later finishers, but that data is not readily available, so we can only award points for the first three finishers.
Standings By Total Points
The top three countries by total points were the United States of America, China, and Russia. The host country, Great Britain, had the third highest number of gold medals, but came in 4th place by our point system.
Table 1 shows the to ten countries by total points .
| Place | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total Points |
Pop | Pop/Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States (USA) | 46 | 29 | 29 | 225 | 314,120.000 | 1,396.089 |
| 2 | China (CHN) | 38 | 27 | 22 | 190 | 1,347,350,000 | 7,091,316 |
| 3 | Russia (RUS) | 24 | 25 | 33 | 155 | 143,117,000 | 923,335 |
| 4 | Great Britain (GBR) | 29 | 17 | 19 | 140 | 62,262,000 | 444,729 |
| 5 | Germany (GER) | 11 | 19 | 14 | 85 | 81,859,000 | 963,047 |
| 6 | France (FRA) | 11 | 11 | 12 | 67 | 65,350,000 | 975,373 |
| 7 | Japan (JPN) | 7 | 14 | 17 | 66 | 127,530,00 | 1,932,273 |
| 8 | Australia (AUS) | 7 | 16 | 12 | 65 | 22,694,409 | 349,145 |
| 9 | South Korea (KOR) | 13 | 8 | 7 | 28 | 50,004,441 | 806,523 |
| 10 | Italy (ITA) | 8 | 9 | 11 | 53 | 60,820,787 | 1,147,562 |
For the complete standings of all 85 medal winning countries, see London2012 Standings by Total Points
Standings By Total Points Per Capita
Taking the size of each country population into account, the top three countries were Grenada, Jamaica, and Bahamas.
Table 2 shows the to ten countries by total points per capita .
| Place | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total Points |
Pop | Pop/Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grenada (GRN) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 105,000 | 35,000 |
| 2 | Jamaica (JAM) | 4 | 4 | 4 | 24 | 2,705,827 | 112,743 |
| 3 | Bahamas (BAH) | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4,434,460 | 117,886 |
| 4 | New Zealand (NZL) | 5 | 3 | 5 | 26 | 4,434,460 | 170,556 |
| 5 | Trinidad and Tobago (T) | 1 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 1,317,714 | 219,619 |
| 6 | Hungary (HUN) | 8 | 4 | 3 | 15 | 9,962,000 | 1,245,250 |
| 7 | Slovenia (SLO) | 1 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 2,057,930 | 293,990 |
| 8 | Montenegro (MNE) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 620,029 | 310,015 |
| 9 | Lithuania (LTU) | 2 | 1 | 2 | 10 | 3,187,700 | 318,770 |
| 10 | Denmark (DEN) | 2 | 4 | 3 | 17 | 5,584,758 | 328,515 |
For the complete standings of all 85 medal winning countries, see London2012 Standings by Population
Taking into account population, the top medal-winning countries did not fare as well. The United States is only #46; China is #65 and Russia is #33. The host country, Great Britain, at #20 beat most large-population countries. Australia (#12) and New Zealand (#4) also did quite well.
The worst-scoring country by population was India. Despite having the second largest population in the world (1.2 billion), India only won 6 medals and no gold. India is a very poor country, with a vast population living at the subsistence level. Few people in India have the leisure time available for sports, and most cannot afford athletic equipment like tennis rackets, kayaks, fencing foils. And their national sport, cricket, is not represented in the Olympics. (Cricket was played in the 1900 Olympics, but was dropped. See Cricket in the Olympics?)
Data Sources:
London 2012 Olympic Medal count from Wikipedia: 2012 Summer Olympics medal table
Country Populations from Wikipedia: List of countries by population
