here it is! The table that makes the chests of people from small countries swell with parochial pride ... Olympic golds won per million people.
You'll note -- or I noted -- that this being a New Zealand website that they slyly/stupidly calculated this as golds per million population, a metric on which New Zealand is doing very well after this morning's triathlon. If you look at medals per head of population, then Australia is well in front, a genuine testament to the money and commitment that country has put behind sportspeople who compete at an elite level.
To be sure, Olympic sports such as swimming, triathlon and yachting get more attention in Australia than they do in America. But it's not as if the Olympic sports are Australia's most popular sports -- as in the United States the real path to sporting riches is in the non-Olympic team sports; including one sport they don't really play anywhere else in the world.
Posted by robe0419 at August 26, 2004 5:18 PM