OES Scores: 2008 v. 2012

Now that 10 days of the Olympics are in the books, we can compare the Olympic Efficiency Scores ("OES") for the ten countries that have the most medals to their OES during the 2008 Olympics. This comparison isn't perfect, because the 2008 data includes all events, while the 2012 data reflects only events contested so far. But what we see so far indicates that:

1. China benefited from a home-field advantage in 2008.
2. Great Britain is benefiting from a home-field advantage in 2012.
3. Australia is running below its 2008 performance.
4. Japan is running above its 2008 performance.
5. The other big countries are pretty much on track to do what they did in 2008.
6. The U.S. Olympic Committee is possibly the worst Olympic committee in the world -- and certainly the worst among major nations. As far as I can tell, we are doing very poorly in sports outside our basic comfort zone of swimming/track/gymnastics/basketball. And that's why our OES is so bad.

One final point. In 2007, the year before the Olympics, China accounted for 5.9 percent of World GDP. Last year, China accounted for 8.0 percent of world GDP. So China does not have to be as efficient as it was in 2008 to increase its medal count.

This time we will rank the top 10 medal winners by their 2012 OES:

1. Russia: OES of 4.187 in 2008 / OES of 4.197 so far in 2012
2. Australia: 2.893 (2008) / 2.300 (2012)
3. S. Korea: 1.703 (2008) / 1.959 (2012)
4. Great Britain: 1.003 (2008) / 1.602 (2012)
5. China: 1.769 (2008) / 1.435 (2012)
6. France: 0.943 (2008) / 1.088 (2012)
7. Italy: 0.752 (2008) / 0.905 (2012)
8. Germany: 0.714 (2008) / 0.685 (2012)
9. Japan: 0.270 (2008) / 0.571 (2012)
10. United States: 0.428 (2008) / 0.445 (2008)