U.S. Fuckin' A.: A Fairly Ridiculous and Somewhat Skewed Look at The United States of America's Olympic Performance History

If you know me, you know just how insane for America I am. You can see then how frustrating the world has been for me lately, given the increased competition among the world's superpowers. Even the most hardcore patriot has trouble finding areas in which the U.S. truly dominates the world anymore. I mean, it's old news that the U.S. has never lost a war ever and always wins wars always and it's not like the dollar is respected internationally like it once was. So how is a guy like me supposed to measure the success of his country without referencing money or war (support our troops)? Athletics you say? I can run with that.

Recently I Googled "olympic medal count by country" and was directed to this Wikipedia page. It's an impressive table, but I didn't feel it adequately portrayed the sheer dominance of America. Hell, all the other countries are even written in the same size font! At least bold America's results, for Christ's sake. Anyway, after I got done reading this obviously-made-by-a-Communist chart, I decided to run my own numbers. After a few minutes of data entry into Excel, some fascinating (if not obvious) stats began to surface. Now, I had originally intended to calculate some fairly complicated statistics on the data, but I keep forgetting to bring my TI-83 home from work. Instead I put a variety of Excel functions to work in order to illustrate my point and came up with the following Top 5 Winningest Nations lists (NOTE: The following lists are based on nations who have won at least 100 total medals in all the Olympics they've appeared in, because if you haven't won at least 100 at this point, why do you even bother showing up at the games anymore?):

Total Medals:
1. United States - 2548
2. Soviet Union - 1204
3. Great Britain - 737
4. France - 730
5. Germany - 719

That's right, the U.S. more than doubles the 2nd place nation, which doesn't even exist anymore. That means the U.S. more than triples its closest competition...and we're just getting started. Here's a further breakdown of those numbers:

Total Gold Medals:
1. United States - 1016
2. Soviet Union - 473
3. Germany - 233
4. Italy - 227
5. France - 218

Total Silver Medals:
1. United States - 824
2. Soviet Union - 376
3. Great Britain - 258
4. France - 239
5. Germany - 235

Total Bronze Medals:
1. United States - 708
2. Soviet Union - 355
3. France - 273
4. Great Britain - 263
5. Germany - 251

Does anyone else have an erection yet? Good. Now let's look at the average amount of medals won per nation per Olympic Games. These numbers are a little misleading because there are way more medals up for grabs during the Summer Olympics and there have been 5 more Summer Games than Winter Games. Still, the evidence is clear: America kicks serious ass. (NOTE: For this category I discarded the results for nations that were no longer in existence, because there's no way for their numbers to ever get worse, and that's not fair.)

Average Total Medals Won Per Olympic Games
1. United States - 55
2. Russia - 35
3. Germany - 30
4. China - 26
5. Great Britain - 16

And again, a breakdown of the domination:

Average Gold Medals Won Per Olympic Games
1. United States - 22
2. Russia - 12
3. China - 10
4. Germany - 10
5. Italy - 5

Average Silver Medals Won Per Olympic Games
1. United States - 18
2. Russia - 11
3. Germany - 10
4. China - 8
5. Great Britain - 5

Average Bronze Medals Won Per Olympic Games
1. United States - 15
2. Russia - 12
3. Germany - 10
4. China - 7
5. France - 6

Noticing a pattern? Now let's look at a breakdown of what percentage of total medals are Gold, Silver, and Bronze per nation.

% Gold Medals
1. China - 41%
2. United States - 40%
3. Italy - 36%
4. Norway - 36%
5. South Korea - 35%

Alright, so we can't win EVERYTHING, but 1%? Check with me in 2012 and we'll see what's up.

% Silver Medals
1. Spain - 43%
2. Bulgaria - 39%
3. Greece - 39%
4. Denmark - 37%
5. Belgium - 36%

OH NO WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPEN-oh wait...Silver? B.F.D.

% Bronze Medals
1. Ukraine - 49%
2. Poland - 45%
3. Romania - 40%
4. Austria - 39%
5. Denmark - 39%

The U.S. could not be found on this list because it was too busy trying to find a container big enough to hold all its Gold medals. It's still looking. Here now are some more interesting numbers that demonstrate the obvious:

Get this: The United States accounts for 19% of all Gold medals ever won. Put another way, nearly 1 out of every 5 Gold medals ever won in the Olympics belongs to an American.
...15% of Silver medals ever won.
...13% of Bronze medals ever won.
...16% of Total medals ever won.

Also, the U.S.'s Gold medals total (1,016) is 26 times the average amount of Gold medals won by other nations (39).
...Silver medals total (824) is 21 times the average amount of Silver medals won by other nations (39).
...Bronze medals total (708) is 17 times the average amount of Bronze medals won by other nations (41).
...Total medals total (2548) is 21 times the average amount of total medals won by other nations (119).

Some of you may be thinking "Sure, but America has more people than a lot of countries." Alright, Nancy, let's take a look at medal winnings per capita:

Total Medals:
1. Norway - 9.20E-05
2. Finland - 8.49E-05
3. Sweden - 6.47E-05
4. Hungary - 4.64E-05
5. Switzerland - 3.96E-05

Gold Medals:
1. Norway - 3.31E-05
2. Finland - 2.65E-05
3. Sweden - 2.03E-05
4. Hungary - 1.59E-05
5. Switzerland - 1.14E-05

Silver Medals:
1. Norway - 3.17E-05
2. Finland - 2.65E-05
3. Sweden - 2.07E-05
4. Hungary - 1.43E-05
5. Switzerland - 1.38E-05

Bronze Medals:
1. Finland - 3.19E-05
2. Norway - 2.72E-05
3. Sweden - 2.37E-05
4. Hungary - 1.63E-05
5. Switzerland - 1.44E-05

*Ahem* Moving on...

Some of the last things I considered were "What if the USSR was still in existence?" and "What if I counted all of the different variations of Germany as one nation?" Would either of them measure up to America? *scoff* See for yourself:

Nation	# Games	G	S	B	T	G/T	S/T	B/T
United States	46	1016	824	708	2548	.3987	.3234	.2779
All Soviet Team	30	702	613	669	1984	.3538	.3090	.3372
All German Team	41	528	542	548	1618	.3263	.3350	.3387

From this table we can see a few things:
1. Germans sure are athletic for a bunch of white men (by "men" I'm referring also to German women, because, come on...)
2. If the USSR was as good at existing as it was at the Olympics, the world would be a redder place.
3. The Germans really love finishing in 3rd place.
4. Even giving other nations the benefit of the doubt, the U.S. still destroys the competition.

Well, that's all the real stats for this monstrous post. If you'd like to see just how ridiculous this got, you can download the original spreadsheet here (NOTE: If you actually look at this thing, you should know that I estimated the population of East and West Germany by taking the population of Germany and dividing it in half because the logic in that is flawless. For the population of Czechoslovakia, I combined the current populations of Slovakia and The Czech Republic. Can you tell the difference? I didn't think so.). Also, I'd like to personally apologize to Sir Fats. I know he only comes here for the pictures, but I spent more time on this spreadsheet than I care to divulge and, frankly, the numbers say it better than Photoshop can.

BONUS SECTION
Holy Shit (Or "Things I Discovered While Writing This Blog"):

• Japan has 1/3 the population of the United States, but all of Japan could fit inside Montana.
• Only 3 nations have competed in all 47 Olympics: France, Great Britain, and Switzerland.
• Originally I calculated the population of the USSR as simply twice Russia's population as a joke and got 283,854,594. Then I added up the populations of all the current nations that used to be a part of the USSR and got 285,230,673, which is remarkably close when you consider I was estimating hundreds of millions of people.
• I cannot spell "Bulgaria" correctly on the first try, ever.
• If there's ever another draft, fuck Canada, I'm moving to Norway.