Rio 2016: Top 10 Total Medals per Capita (August 15, 2016 at 2:02pm EST)
Grenada
Bahamas
New Zealand
Jamaica
Slovenia
Bahrain
Denmark
Hungary
Fiji
Lithuania
Another interesting ranking is Weighted Medals by GDP
As you scan the Olympic medal tally, one thing stands out: larger countries tend to win more medals. An obvious exception, especially in 2008, is Australia, who won the fifth largest number of medals with a population of 23 million, 52nd largest of Olympic countries.
The obvious next question is: who leads the world in medals per capita? This site, which is updated daily during the Olympics, provides the answer.
In addition, it calculates the leaders in gold medals per capita, as well as a weighted medal count where gold is worth four points, silver two and bronze one (weighting as suggested by the New York Times.) Finally, it's a little unfair to ignore the relative wealth of countries, so the site counts medals relative to GDP (provided by the World Bank.)
My bias? I'm originally from New Zealand, which has consistently been in the top half-dozen or so countries for total medals and gold medals per capita, and in 1984 won the most golds per capita.
Others have thought about this, of course. Here are some links to other discussions:
BBC4 More or Less
Chuck Culpepper of the Los Angeles Times
Craig Nevill-Manning
