The UK medal count really is impressive, the US is just as expected
Repeating my analysis from last week on medal counts. To recap, let's look for models that predict a country's medal count based on GDP/population and then check which countries over- or under-perform their size and wealth. In the end, simple total GDP at market rates was the best predictor.
Measured by ratio of obtained medals to predicted medals, Russia was still overperforming (and they got banned from several of the events, so that is very impressive, although we'll never know of which of the other sports they should have gotten banned from). Interestingly, we also see several caucusian countries showing up. And the big winner of this year's Olympics, Great Britain, does show up as getting many more medals than their GDP predicts.
Finally, note that France, which was underperfoming at the beginning of the Olympics, not only caught up, but made it to the over-performers table (très bien, la France!).
Over performing countries ========================= delta got predicted ratio Russia 41.352770 56 14.647230 3.823248 Azerbaijan 11.717356 18 6.282644 2.865036 Great Britain 42.256925 67 24.743075 2.707828 New Zealand 10.872079 18 7.127921 2.525280 Kazakhstan 9.783999 17 7.216001 2.355875 Hungary 8.201280 15 6.798720 2.206298 Kenya 6.573411 13 6.426589 2.022846 Uzbekistan 6.550104 13 6.449896 2.015536 Australia 13.899721 29 15.100279 1.920494 France 19.639542 42 22.360458 1.878316
Note that neither the US nor China show up. If anything, they are performing slightly below expectations.
Now, for the bottom half:
Under performing countries ========================== delta got predicted ratio India -18.620390 2 20.620390 0.096991 Nigeria -8.497863 1 9.497863 0.105287 Austria -7.754915 1 8.754915 0.114222 United Arab Emirates -7.728790 1 8.728790 0.114563 Singapore -7.190392 1 8.190392 0.122094 Philippines -7.185019 1 8.185019 0.122174 Finland -6.753509 1 7.753509 0.128974 Portugal -6.539120 1 7.539120 0.132641 Qatar -6.316772 1 7.316772 0.136672 Puerto Rico -5.873931 1 6.873931 0.145477
India got two medals (neither of which gold, one silver and one bronze) even though they are on track to becoming one of the world's largest economies (right now, their GDP is comparable to Italy's, but growing fast, while Italy is stagnant).
Several oil countries (unearned wealth) are listed there. The 3 richest countries not to win a medal at all are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Chile; another trio of resource rich countries.
*