day 9

It’s all about small.

The U.S. is just too darn big.  And, clearly, a much smaller percentage of its citizens are Olympicable than, say, Slovenia, New Zealand or Denmark or Australia or Belarus or Slovakia or Mongolia or Lithuania or Armenia or Great Britain, or Qatar or Moldova or Hungary or Netherlands or Chzech Republic or Croatia or Cuba or South Korea or Sweden or Romania or Norway or France or Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan or Canada or Serbia or Germany or Switzerland or Russia or Italy or Georgia or Japan or North Korea or Singapore, to name but a few.  Factoring in population, the United States will need 133 more medals to crack the Top Ten, and if they want to prove their superiority over Slovenia and to stake a claim to that coveted Number One position, they’re looking at an additional 551 medals.

There’s only a tidge more than 3 million Armenians (compared to 300 million Americans), so when they bagged their first two medals today, they leapt straight to the top ten. Like 2.7 million-person Jamaica yesterday, whose first two medals catapulted them from nowehere to fifth place, and who climbed to third place with two more medals today.

Slightly smaller than Armenia, little Lithuania bagged a second pendant today, leapfrogging thirteen positions to a Top Ten berth just ahead of – you guessed it – Armenia. Azerbaijan climbed 14 slots by winning two medals and having only 9 million citizens.

Malaysia and Argentina were also new to the medal list today, but at 28 and 40 million respectively, they’re kind of big to make much of a dent in the Medals Per Millions derby.

G’night.