The United States won 126 total medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics, the most of any country for the eighth consecutive Summer Games. Relative to its gross domestic product (GDP), though, Team USA’s hardware haul ranks near the bottom—eighth-worst among countries that won a medal, to be exact.
After this economic adjustment, shooting to the top of the table is Dominica, an island nation in the Caribbean about the size of New York City with a population less than that of Harlem. Dominican-American Thea LaFond, representing Dominica at her third Olympics, won gold in the triple jump in Paris. With one medal and a GDP of $654 million, which ranks 177th in the world according to the World Bank, Dominica’s 1.53 medals per $1 billion of GDP led all countries.
Grenada, with a $1.32 billion GDP that ranks 172nd in the world, was a close second after winning two bronze medals in Paris—in men’s javelin and men’s decathlon. Grenada, though, bested its Caribbean neighbor in terms of medals per capita. Saint Lucia—led by Julien Alfred, who won the women’s 100 meters—placed third in both metrics. The first country on the list outside that 150-mile radius in the Caribbean is Kyrgyzstan.
These statistics inherently favor smaller countries. Among larger countries, Uzbekistan (70th in GDP, 13 medals), Kenya (67th in GDP, 11 medals), Hungary (56th in GDP, 19 medals) and New Zealand (51st in GDP, 20 medals) had the most impressive performances at the Olympics relative to the sizes of their economies.
At the other end of the spectrum is India, which was only able to win six medals and no golds despite having the world’s fifth-largest GDP and a population comprising roughly 17% of people on the planet. If India had won as many medals per person as Grenada, it would have won 24,959 medals. India’s 0.0017 medals per $1 billion of GDP ranked behind even Singapore (0.0020), Indonesia (0.0022) and Mexico (0.0028).
At least it made it onto a podium, though, something more than half of the world’s countries cannot claim. The largest GDPs among that cohort belong to Saudi Arabia (19th), United Arab Emirates (29th), Bangladesh (32nd), Vietnam (34th) and Nigeria (42nd). Those first two Middle Eastern countries are on the verge of altering entire professional sports landscapes with their sovereign wealth fund investments, and yet they could not produce an Olympic medalist.
