Ireland has moved up 45 places in the Olympics medal table since Sydney 2000. The Paris Olympics has been Ireland’s best medal performance, moving from 64th position 24 years ago when Sonia O’Sullivan won a silver medal in the Women’s 5000m, to 19th after Team Ireland took home four gold medals and three bronze from the Paris Games.
Four is the highest number of Olympic Gold medals Ireland has ever won, doubling the amount won in Tokyo four years ago. The closest Ireland came before that was in Atlanta 1996 with three gold medals from Michelle Smith de Bruin for swimming which, despite the controversy that followed, were not struck from the record.
The table below shows each country’s ranking as of 11pm on Saturday night. Throughout the tournament the top two spots have been dominated by the US and China, with both typically knocking each other off the top ranking every few hours as medals are won.
Ireland’s position in the medals table makes it just one of three countries, along with New Zealand and Norway, in the top 20 ranking countries to have a population of fewer than six million people. Ireland is punching well above its weight in terms of medals won, especially when looked at per capita.
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In terms of total medals won per capita by each country (per 10 million population), Ireland would move up two spots to number 17 on the medals board, with 13.7 medals per 10 million people. Grenada, which has a population of just more than 125,000, takes the top spot with 166.6 medals per capita, having won two bronze medals.
Because it can be difficult to compare medals won between countries with vastly different populations (the smallest country taking part in the Olympics is Dominica with a population of 72,734 while the largest is China with a population of 1.4 billion), examining it per 10 million population helps give a standardised measure of how many medals countries have won relative to their population.
Countries with quite small populations are overachieving when looked at per capita, with the top three countries with the most amount of medals all having populations under 200,000 (Grenada, Dominica, Saint Lucia [179,861]). All three are neighbouring countries in the Caribbean.
When comparing gold medals per capita, Ireland ranks sixth, with Dominica, Saint Lucia and New Zealand taking the top three spots.
