It takes around 1 million Brits to gain an olympic medal

[AB Editor]

I've heard lots of people suggest we've done really well considering the size of our fair country (and we have!)

But not quite as well as some would hope! Using the medals per captia rating you can see how we slip from 3rd to 23rd:

http://www.medalspercapita.com/

Although, we fare better when we just look at gold medals:

http://www.medalsperc...golds-per-capita:2012

Everyone happy with the performance of "Team GB"?

[sunny-dave]

Compared to France ....

Mais Oui :+)

[ChuckFickens]

A million for one medal?

that would make the 100meters a bit crowded!

[AB Editor]

I think there is a filtering system Chuck? :)

[AB Editor]

With gold medals we jump to 11th.

[Hopkirk]

New Zealand did very well.

[Canary42]

Yes, very happy.

[factor-fiction]

USA and China come very low on those tables. I can't see India either- it puzzled me as to why they don't feature more in the Olympics.

I wonder if the picture would change if we just looked at the population in the main age ranges - say 16 to 40. We may well have disproportionate number of people in the 70+ category

[argorstran]

Would you have to introduce a certain statistical correction to compensate the larger nations because there aren't enough events ?
e.g. if a nation of 1 million wins a gold , in order to match it China would have to win 1400 golds , but there are only 300 events.....
Any statistics boffins out there ?

[emmie]

absolutely.

[emmie]

as to the French moaning about our cyclists, Dave Brailsford when asked about the secret of the magic wheels on the British bikes, replied rather tongue in cheek, they are good because they are round. I don't think they got the joke, or it was lost in translation. Chris Hoy i think it was who also said that the wheels for their bikes are actually made in France, gets better and better.

[craft1948]

Personally I'm extremely happy as some of the medals were from sports that interested me, those being tennis and athletics. Other sports I don't think we should have bothered with such as beach volleyball, handball, and football.
My favourite sport of all is table tennis but I can't envisage a winner coming from anywhere but China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong. Europe needs another Jorgen Perrson, although the German bloke was quite good.

[emmie]

we had medallists in so many different sports this time, not just the sitting down ones, as someone once remarked.

[mike11111]

A thoroughly meaningless statistic, which hardly deserves to be described as such. By the way, Mr Ed, the term "Brit" is reserved for our detractors, we are Britons.

[petal54]

I feel that some of the athletes chances were somewhat over hyped,but still did good

[ichkeria]

It is quite interesting but of little significance. There's a really daft medals table on the Guardian website which has Russia top and UK second, using a raft of arcane factors. More interesting to me is: is the official table right to focus on gold medals? Is it entirely fair for UK to be above Russia when the latter had far more medals and only slightly fewer golds? Not that I'm complaining. And should we get so hung up about medals tables anyway

[ichkeria]

I should add that by the criterion of our past performances i.e. comparison only with ourselves then we've done very well indeed. Maybe that's the fairest comparison?

[weecalf]

If it were 3 points for gold 2 for silver 3 for bronze how would te table have looked?

[DaisyNonna]

We, the public, had fun, enjoyed the accomplishments of Team GB. Thankyou to all of them and those who were coaching and supporting them. Thanks to the armed forces, thanks to the volunteers. Thankyou to all who were lucky enough to be able to cheer on our athletes.
I thoroughly enjoyed cheering from the sofa.
You have all made me proud.

[factor-fiction]

Weecalf- with 3 points for Gold, 2 for silver on ONE for Bronze, the ranked table showing points would have been:

1 United States 225
2 China 191
3 Russia 156
4 Great Britain 140
5 Germany 85
6 France 67
7 Japan 66
8 Australia 65
9 South Korea 62
10 Italy 53
11 Netherlands 38
12 Hungary 37
13 Ukraine 37
14 Spain 33
15 Kazakhstan 28
16 Brazil 28
17 New Zealand 27
18 Cuba 27
19 Iran 25
20 Canada 25
21 Jamaica 24
22 Czech Republic 21
23 Belarus 21
24 Kenya 19
25 Romania 18
26 Denmark 17
27 Azerbaijan 16
28 Poland 16
29 North Korea 14
30 South Africa 14
31 Ethiopia 14
32 Sweden 14
33 Croatia 13
34 Colombia 13
35 Georgia 12
36 Mexico 12
37 Turkey 11
38 Switzerland 10
39 Lithuania 10
40 Norway 9