On: Neither the Will nor the Cash: Why India Wins So F...

[vacri]

It doesn't really punish larger countries, because larger countries can send much, much broader teams. Try and find a sport that doesn't have the Chinese or Americans competing in it. Then do the same for small-but-not-tiny countries like New Zealand, Ireland or even Greece.

[Someone → vacri]

They send larger teams, but not in 1:1 proportion to their population:

  China      : 1347M people, 386 participants
  USA        :  314M people, 530 participants
  New Zealand:    4M people, 184 participants
  Ireland    :    5M people,  66 participants
  Greece     :   11M people, 105 participants

(sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population, http://totallympics.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=231...)

So, the USA has 62 times the population, but only about 8 times the number of competitors as Ireland. If it was a lottery, you would not expect them to win 62 times the number of medals.

So, yes, it does punish larger countries.

And, from that second link, 'HA' is the sport you asked for (I guess that is handball; makes sense as that is easter European/Scandinavian dominated; http://www.london2012.com/handball/ confirms that)

[vacri → Someone]

I must admit, I'm very surprised at the number of NZ participants.

I still don't think it's highly punished, simply because 'best of 300M' is likely to be better than 'best of 4M'. The US does have 2500 medals compared to NZ's 90 - while not 60 times as many, it's still two orders of magnitude, same as the population. Ireland and Greece are in the same 'order of magnitude' boat with 23 and 108 medals respectively.

The 'try and find' thing was more a rhetorical statement meaning 'not many' :)