Gold and bronze have NZ near top of population medal table

Gold and bronze have New Zealand near top of population medal table in Glasgow

25 July 2014

New Zealand's cycling and judo medals on the first day of competition at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow mean our athletes are sitting third on the Statistics New Zealand population-based medal table, with hosts Scotland at the top.

Statistics NZ is calculating gold and overall medals during the Commonwealth Games to produce tables based on medals per million of population.

Cycling gold from the men's sprint team and bronze for the men's pursuit team, along with bronze for Darcina-Rose Manuel in the judo, mean three medals overall.

"We’re doing very well when we look at how many medals we're winning relative to our population," population statistics manager Vina Cullum said.

New Zealand has 0.67 medals per million of population, behind only Cyprus with 0.89 and Scotland, which has 1.88 medals for every million people in its population. On the basis of solely gold medals, New Zealand is doing even better, sitting in second place on 0.22 behind only Scotland on 0.75.

"There are lots of possible ways of looking at how countries perform during the games," Ms Cullum said.

"The more traditional gold, silver, and bronze table is likely to favour countries with bigger populations. Looking at it relative to population size is one way of evening things out. And if New Zealand comes out near the top, all the better."

A shortened version of the table is available below. The full table plus a table showing rankings based on the number of gold medals won is available on the Statistics New Zealand website. The tables will be updated on Monday 28 July following the first weekend of competition.

Click for big version.

ENDS

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