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