Olympic Medal Count; Norway: 10 gold medals, 4 silver medals, 8 bronze medals = 22 United States of America: 9 gold medals, 7 silver medals, 11 bronze medals = 27 Population of Norway: roughly 5 million Population of the United States of America: roughly 315 million 4,4 medals per every 1 million citizens in Norway 0,085 medals per every 1 million citizens in the United States of America. Not impressed.
Thank you Tobi, for showing us how to mislead people with strongly biased and irrelevant statistics! Salty salty salty. Here let me wipe your tears for you... oh wait
Should we break it down by population living in places with actual snow? Or enough snow/cold to participate in winter sports? Because a majority of the US population lives in warmer and coastal areas. Of the four largest states two get no snow at all (Florida and Texas), one gets some but in the less populated areas, and still not all that much (California). Only the third largest state (New York) gets significant amounts of snow and cold in major populated areas. These states make up around 97.3 million people. Doing a rough tally from per state populations I estimated that 163.2 million people live in states with little to no snow, that's more than half of the origional 315 million you posed. Which makes 0.17 medals per 1 million people. Definitely not as good, but you still didn't even look at half the picture. Not to mention that athletes from all over the world come to the US to train.
Some countries have won medals that do not have any snow. They only use synthesized snow or indoor slopes etc. So I don't think that should matter too much.
Nah, they go to other countries to train. The Australian snowboarder Torah Bright lives in my city, the Tongan luger trained in Germany, and so on. But usually snow/winter conditions spark an interest in winter sports. It's hard to become interested in skiing if you never have the opportunity to go.
Almost all olympic athletes train abroad. For example: Mo Farah. Update for Gold Medal table: 1) Russia 2) Norway 3) Canada 4) US
