Olympics - Measuring Slovak Medals
When it comes to the Olympics and tallying up medals by country, it all depends on your perspective. Is it the total number of medals won? Or the number of golds won? Or if medals were points, such as bronze one point, silver is two, and gold is three, the total point count? Or is it another method entirely?
My Slovak husband says the only way to tally metals is to look at the medals-per-capita standing – take the population of the country and divide it by the number of medals won. Apparently there are many others who tally the medal count this way. Bloggers at the LA Times are having fun bringing smaller countries, including Slovakia, to the forefront of Olympic limelight and doing their best to educate us along the way:
...Slovenia used to belong to Yugoslavia and Slovakia used to belong to Czechoslovakia, the latter easier to guess upfront. They’re both in Europe which, for any Americans reading here, is a continent on the other side of the Atlantic from the United States.
The Atlantic is an ocean.
Slovenia is on top of the medals-per-capita standing. Their 4 medals have them ranked at 501,927 people per medal. Slovakia is also doing well at 1,311,187 people per medal. This has them in 10th place as of Sunday night.
Here’s the top 10, according to the LA Times:
(country, medal tally, MPC)
1. Slovenia (4) – one medal per every 501,927
2. Armenia (5) – 593,717
3. Jamaica (4) – 701,083
4. Australia (29) – 710,374
5. New Zealand (5) – 834,692
6. Belarus (10) – 968,576
7. Trinidad & Tobago (1) – 1,047,366
8. Norway (4) – 1,161,114
9. Estonia (1) – 1,307,605
10. Slovakia (4) – 1,311,187
The US, by the way, is ranked at 40 with 4,674,225. China is at 56.
