Now that Tom Cruise swooped in on the Stade de France outside of Paris and carried off the Olympic flag to Los Angeles, the final reckoning can be made on which country ‘won’ the 2024 Summer Games. I figured that by tying for tops in gold medals and winning the most silver and bronze, the USA was the clear winner.

However, to be fair, one must take population by country into account (within reason by excluding very small countries such as Grenada, who only need to win a few medals top the Olympic chart on a per capita basis). Earlier this year Robert Duncan and Andrew Parece proposed a population-adjusted probability-based index “U”.*

See how your country ranks in by this measure in this final ranking for the Paris Olympics. Aussies rule—gold medals to all! The Peoples Republic of China, who outnumber Australians by 53 to 1, fall to 89^th on the list—second to last. Ouch! Kudos to France for coming in second (silver) and Great Britain third (bronze). The USA ranks fifth—not too bad.

Congratulations to all the Olympians and the organizers of this summer’s games for a very entertaining spectacle. Let’s not bogged down by the medal counts—all who participated get full credit for their all-out efforts.

*Per equation 9 in their Journal of Sports Analytics vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 87-104, 2024, research paper on Population-adjusted national rankings in the Olympics