The USA ranked only 21th in the 2006 Winter Olympics medals production on a per million population basis.

To the Editor:

After being exposed to more than two weeks of relentless USA cheerleading on NBC-TV, it is a bit of a let down to find out that we have slipped in our Winter Olympics medal production on a per million population basis in 2006. We are now down to 21st position out of 26 countries that won medals this year. In the 2002 Winter Olympics the USA was ranked 16th. On a per million population basis the USA (0.08) trailed Norway (3.11), Austria (2.82), Estonia (2.11), Switzerland (1.92), Finland (1.74), Sweden (1.57), Canada (0.75), Croatia (0.69), Canada (0.75), Netherlands (0.56), Latvia (0.42), Czech Republic (0.38), Germany (0.34), South Korea (0.22), Italy (0.19), Slovakia (0.18), France (0.15), Russia (0.13), Bulgaria (0.12), Australia (0.10) and Belarus (0.09).

Norway was clearly the most productive country, garnering Olympic medals at thirty-five times the rate of the USA on a population basis. Even our friendly rivals to the north, the Canadians, garnered Olympic medals at eight times the rate of the USA. Perhaps a little humility is in order.

References: Time Alamanac 2002: estimated 2001 populations; www.yahoo.com: final medal count. Calculations were truncated after the second value to the right of the decimal point.

James K. Sayre

26 February 2006

End.

This web page was recently created by James Sayre.

Contact author James K. Sayre at sayresayre@yahoo.com. Author's Email: sayresayre@yahoo.com

Copyright 2006 by Bottlebrush Press. All Rights Reserved.

Web page last updated on 26 February 2006.