by Kelvin Pollard

(April 2006) It seems fitting that the largest city ever to host a Winter Olympic Games—Torino, Italy—ended up hosting in February the largest-ever competition of this sort, with 2,607 athletes from 80 countries participating. As in the past, several countries not known for their athletic traditions in snow or on ice (such as Brazil, Kenya, and Thailand) also sent athletes.

And the 2006 Torino Olympics set another record—26 of the 80 nations won at least one medal. Germany led the medal count for the third consecutive Winter Games with 29 medals, 11 of which were gold. Despite the many laments about the U.S. performance, the Americans did quite well overall with 25 medals, including nine gold. (Only the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics witnessed a better medal haul for the U.S. team at a Winter Games.) Rounding out the top five countries in the medal standings were the 2010 Olympic host Canada (24 medals, seven gold); Austria (23 medals, nine gold); and Russia (22 medals, eight gold).

But a demographic examination of the medal count—which I call the Crude Medal Rate (CMR)—produces a significantly different medal picture for the Torino Winter Games, although it also produced a three-time champion. As with crude birth and death rates, the CMR considers a country's population size: It divides the total number of Olympic medals a country won in Torino by its total population, then multiplies the result by 1 million.

Norway (which finished sixth in the overall medal count) was the big winner in the CMR, just as it had been in 1998 and 2002. This nation of 4.6 million residents won 19 medals (two of which were gold) in 2006, a performance that translates into a rate of 4.1 medals per million (see Table 1). This was noticeably higher than the CMR of 2.8 for second-place Austria, which likewise benefited both from its high overall medal total and its relatively small population of about 8.2 million.

Table 1
Crude Medal Rate, 2006 Winter Olympics*

*Medals per 1 million population, countries with at least one medal in the 2006 Torino Olympics.

Sources: Medal data: The Organising Committee for the XX Olympic Winter Games Torino 2006, accessed online at www.torino2006.org; Population data: PRB, 2005 World Population Data Sheet.

Indeed, countries with small populations benefit under the CMR. For example, while Estonia won only three medals in Torino (all gold, all in cross country skiing), its population of 1.3 million helped produced a CMR of 2.2 medals per million, good for third place on this measure. By contrast, the large populations of Germany (82.5 million), and the United States (296.5 million) yield CMRs of 0.4 and 0.1, respectively—placing both countries well down the list.

But both Germany and the United States fare better under a second demographic measure, the General Olympic Medal Rate (GOMR). Conceptually similar to the general fertility rate (which measures the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age), this measure accounts for the actual number of athletes a nation sent to Torino—that is, the actual "population" eligible to win a medal. Germany's 163 participants produced a GOMR of 17.8 medals per every 100 athletes—good enough to rank it fifth by this measure (see Table 2).

Table 2
General Olympic Medal Rate, 2006 Winter Olympics*

*Medals per 100 athletes, countries with at least one medal in the 2006 Torino Olympics.

Source: The Organising Committee for the XX Olympic Winter Games Torino 2006, accessed at www.torino2006.org.

The United States, which sent 210 athletes to Torino, had a GOMR of 11.9, placing it just out of the top 10. Although CMR leader Norway fared well (its GOMR was 23.8 medals per 100 participants), it was the Austrians who led on this second measure. Austria's 23 medals (won with a delegation of 81 athletes) produced a GOMR of 28.4 per 100. South Korea and the Netherlands—nations that each sent fewer than 50 athletes to Torino yet won several medals—followed closely.

Of course, neither the CMR nor the GOMR accounts for all the complexities of the Olympics. For example, the Olympics also contain a mixture of individual and team events, and not all nations competed in every sport. And some athletes such as Canadian speed skater Cindy Klassen won medals in more than one event. Finally, 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.

Kevin Pollard is a senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau.