With all the communal back-slapping that’s been going on across the
country since the Commonwealth Games began, you’d think Australia had
achieved something truly memorable over the past eight days.

So, following a tip-off from a subscriber, Crikey thought we’d
calculate how Australia compares to the other top 13 Commonwealth Games medal winners (as of 8.30am this morning) in
relation to GDP and population. If it makes just one
Aussie punter a little more humble over then next week then we’ve done our job.

Adjusted rankings in bold and brackets

Country
Total medals
won
 GDP
($million)
 GDP to medal
ratio
($million)		 Population
(million)
 Population to medal
ratio (people)
Australia 153 631,256 4,126 (4) 20.09 131,107 (2)
UK (aggregate) 111 2,140,898 19,287 (12) 60.44 184,144 (3)
Canada 53 979,764 18,486 (11) 32.81 619,056 (6)
India 34 691,876 20,349 (13) 1,080.26 31,772,352 (13)
South Africa 23 212,777 9,251 (8) 44.34 1,927,826 (8)
NZ 21 99,687 4,747 (6) 4.04 9,160 (1)
Malaysia 12 117,776 9,814 (9) 23.95 19,958,333 (12)
Jamaica 10 8,030 803 (1) 2.73 273,000 (5)
Nigeria 8 72,106 9,013 (7) 128.77 16,096,250 (11)
Kenya 6 15,600 2,600 (2) 33.83 5,638,333 (9)
Singapore 6 106,818 17,803 (10) 4.43 738,333 (7)
Cyprus 4 15,418 3,854 (3) 0.78 195,000 (4)
Ghana 2 8,620 4,310 (5) 21.03 10,515,000 (10)

GDP – 2004 World Bank figures
Population – CIA World Fact Book