GDP and population Olympic Games: How do medals stack up at Paris 2024?
The national peacocking that goes in tandem with the Olympic Games is nothing new, countries love being at the top of the medal table.
But at what cost?
A country’s GDP versus their medal haul is a great way of looking at what the the GDP per gold medal.
Here are the key takeaways:
Olympic Games medals!
There were a total of 27 nations who managed to finish an event on the podium but failed to achieve a gold medal.
The most notable nation is India, who won six medals but no golds. For a nation whose GDP exceeds $3 trillion their return really does kill the myth that gross domestic product is always linked to medal success.
Their six medals, though, come in at £500bn a pop when you look at GDP per medal (simply dividing the GDP by number of medals/gold medals).
Mexico, at $1.4 trillion, also failed to bring home a gold medal along with the likes of Turkey and Singapore.
In the money
Of the nations who did win a gold medal, Switzerland’s one gold in a country with a GDP of £808bn tops the pile. They’re followed by Poland before trillionaire nations Indonesia, Brazil and the USA – whose GDP of $25.5bn sees each of their 40 gold medals equate to $637bn.
Great Britain’s GDP of $3.1 trillion equates to 14 gold medals – of $219bn per first place.
Caribbean duo Dominica and Saint Lucia, who each won their first ever Olympic Games gold medal at Paris 2024, also make the list.
Dominica’s one gold equates to their $600m GDP with Saint Lucia’s gold coming in alongside a $2bn GDP.
So many people
Speaking of Dominica, they were the smallest nation at this year’s Olympics to win a medal at just 72,737.
China’s 1.4bn people produced 91 medals, 40 of which were Gold, with India’s poor games the only other national exceeding 1bn in population.
But it is Grenada who tops the people per medals table with just 62,719 people for each of their two medals. They’re followed by Dominica, Saint Lucia and New Zealand, who had a brilliant Olympic Games with 259,000 people for each of their 20 medals.
Great Britain is 25th in the list with 1m people per medal but it is Pakistan and India who are way off the pace at the bottom of the list.
India’s six medals average 236m people per success with Pakistan marginally worse at 243m per gold.