Yeah, I have to give in: as a German, you just hated when there has been a race with our beloved rival neighbour Netherlands in the medal counts. Netherlands is a land of Speed Skating – and the Norwegians are just good in Cross-Country Skiing… That’s somehow what our hearts tell us… But is it right? After the Olympics, I felt like doing some analysis on this topic.
My Medal Count Winner – What I did
For that reason, I used the 15 sports events, exactly as the IOC has been using them to split the PyoengChang 2018 events:
- Alpine Skiing
- Biathlon
- Bobsleigh
- Cross-Country Skiing
- Curling
- Figure Skating
- Freestyle Skiing
- Ice Hockey
- Luge
- Nordic Combined
- Short Track
- Skeleton
- Ski Jumping
- Snowboard
- Speed Skating
For my analysis, I looked into each of these events separately and only checked whether a country did win a gold, silver or bronze medal. The total amount of these did not bother at all. So if you have 5 golden ones, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals, my medal count for this discipline would be a simple 1-1-1. This might be regarded to be unfair, as there are much more medals in Speed Skating than in Ice Hockey.
My Medail Count Winner – Result
Nevetheless, I feel it is quite interesting to look into the medals like this. Not just because my German heart is right: the Dutch get a significantly worse ranking in the medal count, as they are only competetive in Speed Skating and Short Track. But it gives you much more information: 12 countries are that strong in at least one of the events that they (at least) got one medal each, golden, silver and bronze. Norway even took that triple in 5 out of 15 sports events. Another amazing performance is the united states, who received (any kind of) medal in eleven events.
But who is the most versatile one? If you take the “traditional” medal count leaderboard method where the highest number of golden medals counts most, followed by the number of silver and bronze medals, this board is lead by Canada, who won at least one gold medal in seven sports events. Germany, Norway and the United States won gold in five events each. Here are the Top 10 of my medal count ranking:
| Rank | County | G | S | B |
| 1 | Canada (CAN) | 7 | 6 | 7 |
| 2 | Germany (GER) | 6 | 8 | 4 |
| 3 | Norway (NOR) | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| 4 | United States (USA) | 6 | 5 | 5 |
| 5 | Switzerland (SUI) | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| 6 | Sweden (SWE) | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| 7 | South Korea (KOR) | 3 | 5 | 2 |
| 8 | France (FRA) | 3 | 4 | 3 |
| 9 | Italy (ITA) | 3 | 2 | 3 |
| 10 | Austria (AUT) | 3 | 1 | 4 |
The Netherlands are back in 14th place in here, by the way 🙂 Hope you liked that kind of an analysis (and of course I hope I did not do too many mistakes…).