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by Kelvin Pollard

(March 2002) The Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City were the largest in history, with 2,527 athletes representing 78 countries (including several not known for their traditions in winter sports: Brazil, Cameroon, and Fiji, for example). These participants competed in 78 medal events — also a record for the Winter Games. As was the case four years earlier at the Nagano Olympics, Germany led the count with 35 medals, including 12 gold. The Americans were right behind with a record-shattering 34 medals — 10 of which were gold. Norway (24 medals, 11 gold), Canada (17 medals, 6 gold), Russia (16 medals, 6 gold), and Austria (16 medals, 2 gold) followed in the medal standings.

With the Salt Lake Olympics now a memory, it's time for PRB's examination of the medal count from a demographic perspective. As with previous efforts that followed the Games in Sydney, Nagano, and Atlanta, the two demographic approaches outlined here result in a different medal picture.

The first measure, the crude medal rate (CMR), considers a country's population size. Similar to crude birth and death rates, it is calculated by dividing the total number of Olympic medals a country won by its total population, then multiplying the result by 1 million. One of the top nations in the medal count, Norway, was the big CMR winner (as it was in 1998 in Nagano). The 24 medals won by the Scandinavian nation of 4.5 million translated into a CMR of 5.31 medals per 1 million population, more than twice the rate of second-place Estonia. Austria, Switzerland, and Finland — also countries with small populations and great winter sports traditions — rounded out the top five. The large populations of Germany and the United States worked against them in this measure. Germany's 82 million people produced a CMR of 0.43 (placing it 11th overall), while the 284.5 million people in the United States yielded a CMR of 0.12 (good for 16th place).

Both Germany and the United States fare better under a second demographic measure, the general Olympic medal rate (GOMR). This measure accounts for the number of athletes a nation sent to Salt Lake City — the actual population eligible to win a medal. (The concept is similar to that of the general fertility rate, which measures the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.) With 176 participants, Germany had a GOMR of 19.89 medals for every 100 athletes, good enough to rank it fifth overall (see Table). The Americans, who sent 210 athletes to Salt Lake, had a GOMR of 16.19, placing it seventh. Although CMR leader Norway fared well (its GOMR was 26.09 medals per 100 participants), the "co-champions" were Croatia and Spain — countries that sent small delegations to the Games. Croatia won four medals with its delegation of 14 athletes, while Spain's seven athletes brought home two medals — yielding a GOMR of 28.57 in both cases. (It is interesting to note that each country's medal haul resulted from the efforts of a single athlete — Croatia's Janica Kostelic in Alpine skiing and Spain's Johann Muehlegg in cross-country skiing.)

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  Countries With at Least One Medal in 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics

Crude Medal Rate (medals per 1 million population)			General Olympic Medal Rate (medals per 100 athletes)
Rank	Country	Rate	Rank	Country	Rate
1	Norway	5.31	1	Croatia	28.57
2	Estonia	2.20	(tie)	Spain	28.57
3	Austria	1.97	3	Norway	26.09
4	Switzerland	1.52	4	Netherlands	22.86
5	Finland	1.35	5	Germany	19.89
6	Croatia	0.86	6	Estonia	16.67
7	Sweden	0.67	7	United States	16.19
8	Canada	0.55	8	Austria	14.04
9	Netherlands	0.50	9	China	11.27
(tie)	Slovenia	0.50	10	Canada	10.83
11	Germany	0.43	11	Italy	10.53
12	Bulgaria	0.37	12	Bulgaria	10.34
13	Italy	0.21	13	Russia	10.00
14	Czech Republic	0.19	14	France	9.48
(tie)	France	0.19	15	Switzerland	9.40
16	United States	0.12	16	South Korea	8.33
17	Russia	0.11	17	Australia	7.69
18	Australia	0.10	18	Finland	6.73
(tie)	Belarus	0.10	19	Poland	6.06
20	South Korea	0.08	20	United Kingdom	6.00
21	Poland	0.05	21	Sweden	5.66
(tie)	Spain	0.05	22	Slovenia	2.33
(tie)	United Kingdom	0.05	23	Czech Republic	2.22
24	Japan	0.02	24	Japan	1.85
25	China	0.01	25	Belarus	1.52

Sources: Data on medals and athletes: Salt Lake Olympic Committee, data accessed online at www.saltlake2002.com, on Feb. 27, 2002. Population data: Carl Haub and Diana Cornelius, 2001 World Population Data Sheet (Washington, D.C.: Population Reference Bureau, 2001).

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While these results are interesting, one needs to remember that neither the CMR nor the GOMR account for the complexities of the Olympics. For example, the Olympics are a mixture of individual and team events, and not all nations competed in every sport. Moreover (as Kostelic's and Muehlegg's cases illustrate), some athletes competed — and won medals — in more than one event. And regardless of the measure used, any talk about which nation did best in the medal standings obscures the fact that the athletes, not the countries they represent, are the ultimate Olympic champions.  

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 Kelvin Pollard is a policy analyst at the Population Reference Bureau.