A map of the Olympic medal count
This has to be the coolest interactive map I’ve seen in a long time, and timely. It’s a clever geographic representation of the Olympic medal count (at the bottom of the page you can see the more conventional medal count in table form). The more medals your country has, the larger it’s depicted on the map. The best part, though, is that this map does as much for every Olympics back to 1896. It’s rich to see which countries were dominant in which years. The first Olympics was a surprise. Then see the U.S. emerge as a world power in the early 20th century. See England’s former glory. See Germany in 1936. See the Communist Bloc in the 1980s. Great informational delivery.




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back to top8 Comments to “A map of the Olympic medal count”
One thing is for sure, there is no question where the Cirque de Sole got all of their performers. Yesterday’s crushing of the entire world by China’s Men Gymnasts answered that once and for all. The sun is setting on Japan.
You saw the best the world has eveer produced.
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A couple things that stand out to me that are really interesting…
First, up until the second half of the 20th century you can really see how the difficulty of travel affected the games. It seems that most countries won more medals when the games were held in a more geographically accessible locale. Most likely countries were simply able to send larger teams to the games. This still seems to hold true somewhat, but with travel easier and more affordable this no longer seems to be as big a variable.
Starting around 1984 and going forward you really start to be able to see the shapes of the continents… It seems that the Olympics truly are becoming a worldwide sporting event… Now it seems that medal wins could, at least roughly, be predicted by looking at the general health, wealth, and population of each country.
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The U.S. men’s team was also amazing when you consider that they were all young and first time Olympians. China’s team was much more seasoned and mature. Surely they deserved their victory, but it’s quite possible that the U.S. could come back in 2012 and recapture the gold.
I’m also disappointed that China can’t seem to resist the urge to cheat when they think it will benefit them. While a mature men’s team is a plus, pre-pubescent women (girls) often have an advantage over older, larger women in gymnastics. Now that FIG has made it illegal to compete girls younger than 16, China is manufacturing passports with false dates to make their younger girls old enough to compete. Their victory, presuming they do win, will be hollow, indeed.
China does train amazing gymnasts, and they deserve credit for that. But their disregard for basic ethics is appalling!
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I wonder why the map says that Michael Phelps has only won 2 gold medals. I thought he was up to 7 now.
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Ree – Phelps won five golds in Athens and two (at the time) in Beijing.
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Oh–thought he was now tied with Mark Spitz who, I thought, won 7 at a single Olympics. I don’t really follow swimming, though, so I guess I was misunderstood.
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Ree:
I believe that Phelps is now tied with Spitz, among others, for the most career medals, but Spitz still has more gold medals in a single Olympics.
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Is there an Olympics category for cheating?
Trust me, some of the teams would cheat in the cheating competition.
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