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Comment by nopinsight | Hacker News Reader

This is not an entirely fair comparison. Each nation has a quota of the number of athletes for each sport it can send to the Olympics.

For example, in swimming, only two participants per nation are allowed. Some of the swimmers who got the 3rd place in US National Trials could even win bronze, but they cannot participate.

More often the case, there is only one national team allowed for a relay or team event. So even if China has 300 times the population of New Zealand, it can send the same number of teams and is limited to a maximum of one medal per event.

The methodology is biased against larger nations with a good pool of athletes.

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It beyond that though, a lot of it down to the sports themselves and the way they're structured.

Look at swimming - if as a country you're great at swimming there are a boat load of medals you can win. Great at football or hockey on the other hand... two in each,- the men's event and women's event.

And that's before you get into sports that aren't even there - India would be in with a solid shot at a cricket medal but it's not an Olympic sport.

And because different countries have access to different facilities, different participation and interest levels the cultural differences that dictate these things can have a major impact.

Watching the Olympics has been great but while interesting, I'm not sure how much you can really learn from this sort of analysis.

China won all the table tennis gold medals. I got the impression from the commentary they they could probably field a team of players who missed selection and get the same result.

> For example, in swimming, only two participants per nation are allowed.

Really? http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewNewsArticle.aspx?TabId=0&...

Yes, really.

I'm from Australia, and we have the same issue. The Jamacians have a similar issue in the sprints (I think you can enter 3 per event there).

I'm not sure what you think that shows - perhaps you are missing that there are many different swimming events?

I meant two participants per nation per event. It should be clear from context.

Correct - remember relay teams are allowed 5 members.

But I think the point of this comparison is that everyone has the same chance of having an Olympic champion born in their country. Thus countries with more people have a better chance to get medals. This is just an attempt to even things out by diving medals over population. Not a perfect comparison by any means, but neither is just medal count when you compare China vs Grenada.

Olympic sailing also only allows each nation to qualify one crew for each type of boat used. The newly crowned Olympic Champion in the Finn class, Ben Ainslie, had a poor regatta at the 2011 Finn World Championships. However, his fellow countrymen still took first and third place overall.

I wonder if even adjusting for the amount of money (involving cost of living into the equation) would be a more fair way to adjust?

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