Does a team event count as only a single medal? For instance, does the US get only one single gold for the men's basketball team, or do they award one for each player on the team? I think in the official count it's just one, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, the IOC's official line is that they don't recognize medal counts for nations, they just provide data - competition is between individuals, even if they do represent countries.
While that may seem like a bit of a cop-out, it does make sense. I'm not even sure you can really compare medal counts between individuals in different sports, because the number of related events differs in each category.
It's entertaining to think about in a water-cooler sort of way, but otherwise, you can only get a very rough sense of a country's devotion to sport. Sure, a medal count close to zero for a large country might indicate this - but even then, it's not like there's olympic cricket, is there? If there were, and it was only worth one medal for the entire thing, I think most of India would happily trade first place in the medal count for one gold in cricket ;)
You are right there is no correlation. Being insanely dominant in a sport like basketball yields two medals (men & womens). Being insanely dominant in swimming yields medals for men and womens, multiple positions on the podium, multiple events, etc. No matter how great of a volleyball player you are, you can only earn one medal. So countries that focus on certain areas (track/field, swimming, diving, gymnastics) get a lot more than those that focus on team sports.
Anyway, the IOC's official line is that they don't recognize medal counts for nations, they just provide data - competition is between individuals, even if they do represent countries.
While that may seem like a bit of a cop-out, it does make sense. I'm not even sure you can really compare medal counts between individuals in different sports, because the number of related events differs in each category.
It's entertaining to think about in a water-cooler sort of way, but otherwise, you can only get a very rough sense of a country's devotion to sport. Sure, a medal count close to zero for a large country might indicate this - but even then, it's not like there's olympic cricket, is there? If there were, and it was only worth one medal for the entire thing, I think most of India would happily trade first place in the medal count for one gold in cricket ;)