Medals Per Capita table warms up to Iceland

For two heaving weeks, you could sense a planet cringing over the prospect that its Godzilla Olympic nation, the Bahamas, would get more than one medal and put the old chokehold on the vital Medals Per Capita proceedings.

Australia turned up in Beijing muscular as ever. Armenia surfaced and spent five days at No. 1. New Zealand had banner Beijing Games and menaced. Here came Slovenia, of course. Jamaica became a blur on the track and a Zeus in the standings. The Bahamas surfaced with a first medal as a fur-flying race loomed.

And as the final weekend dawned, up popped a name so lyrical to Medals Per Capita ears that the mere thought of it constitutes a Medals Per Capita dreamscape.

Iceland.

Why, that’s Medals Per Capita poetry.

An immediate MPC darling, Iceland clinched a medal Friday by reaching the team handball final in a convulsive upset of Spain that nobody outside of Reykjavik saw coming. Iceland’s president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, attended the match and called it the biggest climax in Icelandic athletic history. Iceland’s first lady, Dorrit Moussaieff, gave a 10-minute pre-match shoulder massage to player Logi Geirsson, Reuters reported, surely one of the coolest moments in Medals Per Capita history, Olympic history, sports history and first-lady history.

"Before the game we form a ring and take each other’s hands like the Vikings did 500 years ago," Geirsson said in the Reuters article. "And we say we’re going out on a ship to fight for our lives."

And we say at MPC headquarters, please get me a tissue, given such runaway appeal plus an understated population of 304,367 people with thick skin. Once those medals go onto Icelandic handball necks, MPC reckoned on Saturday morning, that would make Iceland a late entry at No. 2 in the standings, behind only Jamaica, which then added an 11th track medal (women’s 4-x-100) to whittle its MPC rating to an imposing 254,939 (one medal for every 254,939 Jamaicans).

Right about then, though, seeing such insurrection from everywhere, the Athens champion the Bahamas finally decided it had to bring the kibosh. Its 4-x-400-meter relay team of Andretti Bain, Andrae Williams, Michael Mathieu and Christopher Brown came through in 2:58.03, easily beating everybody but the United States.

That lifted the Bahamian medal total to two, one medal for every 153,725 Bahamians, with no word on whether that includes those using it as a tax shelter.

With one day to go, that out-of-this-world numeral would appear insuperable, unless Jamaica can come up with eight more medals, or unless Australia can get 134 more, or unless China can find about 9,000.

Or unless Iceland, beyond handball glory, could find just one.

Medals Per Capita minutiae after Saturday after the jump...

-- Gasping and straining to the wire, Australia finally corralled enough medals, 46, to overtake feisty neighbor New Zealand, surely saving itself from hearing a slew of guff from chesty Kiwi Medals Per Capita enthusiasts. New Zealand’s nine medals from a measured population of 4,173,453 had kept it ahead of Australia for day upon day upon day, even as the latter hiked its medals total from 35 to 36 to 38 to 42 to 46 just panting away for favorable long division. Finally, it came.

-- With MPC aptitude amok in the former Soviet republics, from Armenia (No. 7) to Belarus (No. 10) to Estonia (No. 11) to Lithuania (No. 12) to Georgia (No. 15) to Azerbaijan (No. 21), and even to more populous brethren Kazakhstan (No. 24) and the Ukraine (No. 31), say hello to Latvia. That sturdy nation of 2,245,423, No. 7 in Athens 2004, has surged from nowhere to No. 14 with three late medals, including Maris Strombergs’ gold in the BMX, pleasing an MPC board of directors -- sorry, board of director -- who feels deprived from having had a childhood that totally lacked Olympic BMX.

-- As mentioned on previous days, Norway tends to rule the Winter Olympics MPC, a feat perhaps more Herculean than the Summer Olympic MPC given that often during the Winter Games, people who go outside would generally be considered insane. Well, during the weekend Norway has demonstrated its extreme versatility and uncommon studliness with a women’s heavyweight taekwondo silver medal from Nina Solheim, a men’s javelin gold from Andreas Thorkildsen and a women’s team handball gold. That brings it to 10 medals, to sixth place and to undeniable status as a two-season, multi-discipline mastodon.

The top 10 (pending Iceland’s Sunday medal):

1. Bahamas (2) - 153,725
2. Jamaica (11) - 254,939
3. Slovenia (5) - 401,542
4. Australia (46) - 447,844
5. New Zealand (9) - 463,717
6. Norway (10) - 464,445
7. Armenia (6) - 494,764
8. Cuba (22) - 519,270
9. Trinidad & Tobago (2) - 523,683
10. Belarus (18) - 538,097

Selected others (from 86 countries with medals):

11. Estonia (2) - 653,802
14. Latvia (3) - 748,474
25. Great Britain (47) - 1,296,678
29. South Korea (31) - 1,588,156
30. France (38) - 1,685,730
31. Ukraine (27) - 1,701,640
35. Germany (41) - 2,009,013
36. Russia (69) - 2,039,160
39. Spain (16) - 2,528,193
44. United States (107) - 2,839,482
67. China (96) - 13,854,630
81. Sudan (1) - 40,218,455

-- Chuck Culpepper

Culpepper is a contributor to The Times.

Photo: Members of Iceland's team celebrate victory over Spain in a men's handball semifinal at the Beijing Olympics. Credit: PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images

Comments

[Markus]

CHINA IS THE FIRST IN MEDAL ACOUNT!!

IN ALL TIMES, WHO HAD MORE GOLD MEDAL IN OLYMPICS GAMES WHERE THE FIRST, THIS YEAR JUST BECAUSE THE US HAS LESS GOLD MEDALS, MOST OF AMERICANS JOURNALS SAY USA IS THE FIRST !!! ARE YOU KIDDING??!! ARE YOU REAL JOURNALISTS??!! DONT YOU HAVE SHAME OF THIS??!!!

skorpioxr@hotmail.com

[Glenn]

Yes! I'm a native of the Bahamas, the most athletic country in the world, to be declared for another 4 years. We are the MPC bullies...and we're mean.

Forward, upward, onward, together. Live on Bahamaland, live on.

[JD]

Quick! Get out the calculator! I'm watching the gold medal boxing bout between Cuba and Mongolia! This could be the MPC match of the day and could have dire consequences for countries hanging onto a top ten spot! We're all on the edge of our seats!

[roger]

I like the medals per capita of medals per GDP perspective. check out this interactive chart widget, which does the calculation for you across different dimensions: http://www.youcalc.com/apps/1219242654520

[Dasa]

I'm a Slovenian and proud to be one, especially since we are 3rd on the medals per capita list! Slovenia is not only a small country (20,273 km² with 2.026.655 inhabitants) but we are a young country - we achieved our independence in 1991.

I FEEL SLOVENIA!

Thanks to our athletes and to all the reporters. :)

[Ray]

The medal count on this newspaper makes no sense at all. A bronze medal doesn't carry the same weight a gold medal. In all other countries, China has been leading the standings throughout most of the Olympics.

[Matthew Van Echten]

Anyone thought of what the medals per land mass table might look like? Take that Australia ! (yes I'm from their fiesty neighbour New Zealand)

[Vahe]

Go Armenia, In three prior Olympic Games, you had a total of 3 medals. In these games you had 6!! Congratulations!! I expect more success in London, all the winners were all pretty young. 25 athletes, 6 medals..Not to shabby

[Rainer]

Read your comments on per capita medal calculations - the usual medals table ranks countries by gold medals, not by total medals. Otherwise a gold medal would be worth the same as a bronze medal. Therefore it would also be best to calculate the per capita weighting for gold medals, not total medals earnt.

[Chris]

Armenia also had a bunch of Armenians representing other countries that won medals, I think the LA times should do a list like that as well.

[Robert McKenzie]

This is all very interesting, thank you Chuck.

As for some of the other people making comments regarding the "regular" medal count table... yes indeed, the USA journalists all seem to be using the "total medal count" table to determine who is leading the pack, while all sources from all the other countries I have seen are using the "gold medal count" table to determine who is leading.

Simply weighting the medals according to a 3-2-1 standard (such is done in voting for sports awards in the USA itself - witness Heisman Awards, pro-sports MVP awards, etc., etc.) gives the over all lead to China by the very narrow margin of 3 points: 223-220)

Clearly, these two were in a photo finish showdown, but like Phellps won his medal by a fingernail, and Torres lost hers by the same margin, China was able to eke it out by a smidgen (they were actually tied going into the last few days) .... unless you account for population/GDP and so on and so forth.

But most American journalists and media, with the notable exception of Chuck, of course would find a way to put the USA at the top of the list. Just as the Chinese would, as well. Propaganda lives on, all across the world.