About a week before Beijing 2022 started, Amanda Shendruk put together some great data tables about countries’ performances at the Winter Olympics. One of the most interesting stats was Lichtenstein’s population per medal score of 37,918 at the last Winter Games, compared to Norway’s 136,205 and China’s 154,777,777.
Lichtenstein, with a population similar to a typical American college campus, had relatively great success at the 2018 Winter Olympics. It sent only three athletes and grabbed a bronze medal. It also beat out Norway for the top population-per-medal ratio—but only that once. Norway has held the top spot at every other Winter Olympics since 1998.