Who won the Sydney 2000 Olympics?: An allometric approach

If the table of Olympic medals is ordered by total medals won, it is dominated by the larger wealthier nations. However, when ordered by medals per capita, small island nations dominate, and the eastern bloc dominates when ordering is on medals per gross domestic product. This situation changes only somewhat when medal ‘points’ are considered (gold, 3, silver, 2, bronze, 1, for example). This paper examines the least squares fitting of a log-linear allometric model to data relating all these variables for the 80 countries which won at least one bronze medal in Sydney. This analysis suggests that Cuba ‘won’ convincingly, that the USA finished 18th and that gold and silver medals are both valued about twice as much as bronze medals.