Further to my last post, I would now like to say with some certainty that Usain Bolt is indeed the greatest ever Olympian, in my opinion. Certainly he is the greatest of these games. I have very puplicly made it clear how annoyed I am getting at the Phelps hype, especially living in the States. However the truth is I think what he has done is very very impressive, and he still seems like a good chap. But when I remember the 2008 Olympic games, I will only remember Bolts runs.
Is it not easier to get more medals in swimming then athletics? I think so. The problem I have is that there are four races of each distance available to an athlete, all four using a different technique to reach the finish. Your arms and legs move a different way in each, and the way you turn around is different too. You also enter the water a different way.
There is only one way Bolt can get gold in 100m. He can not run backwards, or skip, or run without bending his knees. I dare say he would have got more medals then Phelps had he been able to. There are more ways to move through water then there are to move on land.
However, none of this takes away what Phelps has achieved after all, its not his fault the events are designed differently.
Another though I had when looking at the medals table, was the proportion of medals to population. I thought of this because GB are now 3rd in the medals table, behind only the international juggernauts of the USA and China. With this in mind I sought to come up with a medals table were the number of people available to a country is reflected in the medals table. Below is what I cam up with; (i am not yet skilled enough in HTML code to work out how to remove the enormous gap between this text and the table, you just have to scroll down LOADS)
| Country | Medals | Population | |
| Chinese Taipei | 2 | 0.00 | |
| Slovenia | 5 | 2029000 | 405800.00 |
| NZ | 8 | 4274800 | 534350.00 |
| Jamaica | 5 | 2714000 | 542800.00 |
| Armenia | 5 | 3002000 | 600400.00 |
| Australia | 35 | 21394309 | 611265.97 |
| Estonia | 2 | 1340600 | 670300.00 |
| Bahrain | 1 | 760168 | 760168.00 |
| Belarus | 11 | 9690000 | 880909.09 |
| Denmark | 6 | 5489022 | 914837.00 |
| Norway | 5 | 4778500 | 955700.00 |
| Cuba | 11 | 11268000 | 1024363.64 |
| Lithuania | 3 | 3361100 | 1120366.67 |
| Netherlands | 13 | 16445000 | 1265000.00 |
| Mongolia | 2 | 2629000 | 1314500.00 |
| T&T | 1 | 1333000 | 1333000.00 |
| Slovakia | 4 | 5402273 | 1350568.25 |
| Georgia | 3 | 4395000 | 1465000.00 |
| Switzerland | 5 | 7637300 | 1527460.00 |
| Azerbaijan | 5 | 8467000 | 1693400.00 |
| Finalnd | 3 | 5318105 | 1772701.67 |
| GB | 33 | 60587300 | 1835978.79 |
| Bulgaria | 4 | 7640238 | 1910059.50 |
| Kazakhstan | 8 | 15422000 | 1927750.00 |
| Hungary | 5 | 10043000 | 2008600.00 |
| S.Korea | 24 | 48224000 | 2009333.33 |
| Czech Rep | 5 | 10403136 | 2080627.20 |
| France | 29 | 64473140 | 2223211.72 |
| Latvia | 1 | 2268000 | 2268000.00 |
| Croatia | 2 | 4555000 | 2277500.00 |
| Cananda | 13 | 33350000 | 2565384.62 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 2 | 5317000 | 2658500.00 |
| Romania | 8 | 21438000 | 2679750.00 |
| Ukraine | 17 | 46059306 | 2709370.94 |
| Austria | 3 | 8340924 | 2780308.00 |
| Germany | 28 | 82191000 | 2935392.86 |
| Sweden | 3 | 9215021 | 3071673.67 |
| Italy | 19 | 59619290 | 3137857.37 |
| Zimbabwe | 4 | 13349000 | 3337250.00 |
| Panama | 1 | 3343000 | 3343000.00 |
| Russia | 42 | 141888900 | 3378307.14 |
| Greece | 3 | 11147000 | 3715666.67 |
| USA | 79 | 304900000 | 3859493.67 |
| Singapore | 1 | 4588600 | 4588600.00 |
| Kenya | 8 | 37538000 | 4692250.00 |
| Poland | 8 | 38115967 | 4764495.88 |
| Serbia | 2 | 9858000 | 4929000.00 |
| Spain | 9 | 46063000 | 5118111.11 |
| Japan | 22 | 127690000 | 5804090.91 |
| Togo | 1 | 6585000 | 6585000.00 |
| Tajikistan | 1 | 6736000 | 6736000.00 |
| Uzbekistan | 4 | 27372000 | 6843000.00 |
| DPR Korea | 6 | 48224000 | 8037333.33 |
| Tunisia | 1 | 10327000 | 10327000.00 |
| Portugal | 1 | 10623000 | 10623000.00 |
| Ecuador | 1 | 13341000 | 13341000.00 |
| Chile | 1 | 16763470 | 16763470.00 |
| Algeria | 2 | 33858000 | 16929000.00 |
| China | 76 | 1325600000 | 17442105.26 |
| Cameroon | 1 | 18549000 | 18549000.00 |
| Argentina | 2 | 40301927 | 20150963.50 |
| Colombia | 2 | 44513090 | 22256545.00 |
| Turkey | 3 | 70586256 | 23528752.00 |
| Ethiopia | 3 | 79221000 | 26407000.00 |
| Malaysia | 1 | 27170000 | 27170000.00 |
| Morocco | 1 | 31224000 | 31224000.00 |
| Brazil | 6 | 187495000 | 31249166.67 |
| Indonesia | 5 | 231627000 | 46325400.00 |
| S.Africa | 1 | 47850700 | 47850700.00 |
| Thiland | 1 | 63038247 | 63038247.00 |
| Iran | 1 | 70495782 | 70495782.00 |
| Egypt | 1 | 75212000 | 75212000.00 |
| Vietnam | 1 | 87375000 | 87375000.00 |
| Mexico | 1 | 106682500 | 106682500.00 |
| India | 1 | 1136876600 | 1136876600.00 |
So as you can see, it is the humble Slovenians who deserve the most praise in these games. I couldn't find a population stat for Chinese Taipei, but unless they have a population of 800k or less, they won't take top spot. I simply took the population of a country and divided it by the number of total medals won by that same county. The final column shows the number of people in that counrty for every medal won. Of course this table doesn't tell the whole story. There are funding issues within certain countries, as well as political ones which make them unable to compete to the level that they are capable of. Nevertheless, it still makes interesting reading.
