8th August 2021 – (Tokyo) Hong Kong first competed at the Olympic Games in 1952, then as a British colony (British Hong Kong). Hong Kong has participated at every Summer Olympic Games (14 summer, 4 winter) since then except for the boycotted 1980 Games, and has also participated in the Winter Olympic Games since 2002.
Hong Kong won its first medal/gold medal in 1996, and a second gold medal in 2021. Apart from those, Hong Kong has also won seven other medals, three silver, and four bronze.
For the first time in Tokyo Olympics, Hong Kong won a total of 1 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze. While the United States and China have battled it out for supremacy at the top of the overall tally – based on gold medals and overall medals – there is always intrigue surrounding the performances of smaller nations based on their populations.
According to Tom Decent of The Sydney Morning Herald, Bermuda and San Marino could lay claim to enjoying the most successful Olympic campaigns at Tokyo 2020 if the barometer of success came down to gold medals and overall medals per population.
In second on the list of most successful countries by gold medals is the Bahamas (196,622 per person), followed by New Zealand (688,890), Slovenia (692,979) and Jamaica (740,292), the latter of which won all four gold medals in track and field.
When analysing overall medals per person, San Marino wins this category. The tiny country located inside Italy – with a population of 33,391 – won three medals, therefore averaging one per 11,310 citizens.
Bermuda’s figure of one every 63,918 doesn’t change, while further down the list was Grenada (112,523 people per medal), Bahamas (196,622 per medal) and New Zealand (241,112 per medal).
From No.6 to No.10 on the list is Jamaica (329,019 people per medal), Slovenia (415,788), Fiji (448,222), Netherlands (475,969) and Georgia (498,645).
When looking at bigger countries, Indonesia won just one gold medal and has a population of more than 273 million people, while India has one medal to show for every 276 million or so people.