We hear so much about how far down the OECD rankings New Zealand is these days. So it’s good to finally have an area in which we excel. According to the Purchasing Power Olympic Performance Index (PPOPI), New Zealand produced the best results among the 30 members of the OECD in this month’s Olympic Games. The measure suggests that we performed nine times better than the benchmark United States (given a score of 100), taking into consideration our far smaller population and buying power. Slovakia placed 2nd in the OECD, while Iceland was 3rd. Australia was 4th, while the United States, runners-up on the official medals table, placed 22nd.

The official “winner” of the Olympics is the country with the most gold medals. Of course, this did not stop websites in at least one country changing the way they report the medal count. Suddenly, websites have started listing countries by total medals won, rather than gold medals, so a different country comes out top of the list. Either way, though, these lists don’t give a fair reflection of which country is the real winner in terms of it outperforming what one might expect from a country of that size and resourcing.

One (very limited) alternative measure of performance at the Games has already received coverage in the press. It simply divides population by the total medals won. It does nothing to account for different types of medals won (surely you cannot just sum a gold and a bronze and call them equal), nor the economic strength of a country. One would expect the world’s rich countries, with their far greater access to sports facilities, quality coaches, and funds to travel to the Games, to perform better than developing countries.

As an example, China has the world’s largest population (more than four times that of the United States). It should be expected to win large numbers of medals on this basis alone. However, in buying power terms, GDP per capita is only US$5,300 per person, well below the US$45,800 in the United States or the US$26,400 in New Zealand. Both these factors should play a role in deciding whether the 51 gold, 21 silver, and 28 bronze medals won by China represent a better or worse performance of that of the 36 gold, 38 silver, and 36 bronze medals won by the United States.

We thus present the PPOPI. It compares the performance of countries based on their relative total buying power. In other words, it incorporates both the population of a country, and the ability of that population to buy goods and services, such as a thoroughbred horse, a board-sail, or a BMX. It assigns a weighting of nine to a gold medal, three to a silver medal, and one to a bronze medal (a weighting that is, we admit, up for debate).

The following table shows the performance of selected countries.

The Games’ top performer in terms of the PPOPI, Zimbabwe, also points out the shortcoming of the Index. With an economy in tatters, the country has a buying power GDP of just $200 per person. It also has a relatively small population, of just 12.4 million. Yet it has amassed one gold medal and three silvers, a seemingly extraordinary achievement. In the PPOPI, Zimbabwe has performed 213 times above the benchmark country, the United States. But delving a little deeper shows that Kirsty Coventry, a swimmer, accounts for all four medals. No disrespect to Ms Coventry, who is undeniably an excellent athlete, but one struggles to think that she personally is representative of the buying power of her country’s population as a whole.

Second is Jamaica, thanks to the usual haul of medals on the track, and then Georgia. In fact, the top ten is a veritable who’s who of the world’s low and lower-middle income countries. Only Belarus and the Bahamas have buying power of more than US$10,000 per person.

New Zealand ranks 17th on the index, well above its official medal table placing (26th). The major difference, of course, is the list of countries ahead of us. Australia places 27th, while the Games’ official winners and runners-up place 46th and 61st respectively.

Several rich countries do even worse than the United States, including Japan, Austria and Singapore, while one of our greatest rugby nemeses, South Africa, has endured its worst Games since 1936, and ends in 83rd place on the PPOPI.