OK, enough of the boring medal count from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Lets get serious.
What are the rankings once you take population into account (per capita) and income (Gross Domestic Product or GDP)?
This table took a while to produce and offers some fascinating insights. It doesn't update automatically yet (but I'll work on that).
Here are the REAL tallies with meaningful rankings. Who succeeds despite challenges of low income or a small population pool to draw from?
True Medal Tally for the 2008 Beijing Olympics - draw your own conclusions.
ed: We tried to put the table into this article but unfortunately the finextra blog won't allow html tables at this time sorry.