It’s become a bit of a biannual tradition for me to write an about the Olympics – specifically the distribution of medals between countries.
In terms of the gold medal count, this was the closest the games ever (and closest possible) with the USA overtaking China on the last day of competition. I think this will be a rivalry for many games to come.
A couple other assorted notes about the totals:
- While Britain did a bit worse than in Rio, the 2004-2012 bounce has shown significant staying power.
- FiveThirthyEight put together a great projection of medals. Which I recommend you take a look at.
- While the Olympic Athletes from Russia took home a decent number of medals, the team is very far from the heyday of the USSR powerhouse. The sanctions, obviously, have hampered the ability of Russia to contend on a broad scale, but third was in striking distance – which is pretty remarkable. We’ll see what happens in Paris.
- While some stories (and the analysis from 538 referenced above) emphasized the disappointment for Japan, the increase in their medal haul from 12 to 27 is absolutely impressive (and only 7 in 2012)! The home spike is real and substantial.
- The narrative also emphasized the USA disappointment (in particular, men’s track and field) and while that may be accurate, the consistency of the number of gold medals received by team USA is remarkable – ignoring the boycotted games, the team has always been between 33 and 46. Granted, the total number of medals given out has been steadily increasing over time.
