USA win Rio 2016 Olympic Games

The run-up to the games of the XXXI^st Olympiad in Rio have been fraught with political controversy within Brazil and sporting controversy in the Olympic movement at large, as the issue of Russia’s alleged state-sponsored doping raged.

Neither problem has been resolved by and after the Games, but to the sporting world’s collective relief, for a fortnight at least Sport took over, and the Rio Olympic Games turned out to made of the same heady stuff as previous editions: excitement, endeavour and emotion, with plenty of sporting brilliance and the occasional touch of drama.

• Yes, the USA have won once again, and even though their points share is slightly below London’s (it was 12.1% then), their margin over the runners-up has hugely increased: from 1750 points over Russia in London, to 2355 points over China, meaning the USA scored more than twice the points China did. The almighty Stars & Stripes not only won more medals, they also recorded a top-8 finish  (as per the ‘count’ column) 216 times, vs China’s 151!
• Talking China, while they fared less well than in London medal-wise, they actually improved 1 position in Rio, snatching second place by a mere 28 points from Germany – who however posted the biggest position improvement vs London among the top 14 nations, haven climbed 5 places up the table
• Improvements: Serbia gained an exceptional 26 positions compared to London thanks to top 3 places in two of the big point-earning sports: they were runners up in Men’s Basketball and in Women’s Volleyball, while Denmark’s victory in Men’s Handball was the main reason behind their 14 positions-leap
• Host countries: interestingly, both China and Great Britain finished as high as they did when they hosted the Olympics in 2008 and 2012 respectively, while Brazil, though improving vs their 10^th place in Beijing, lost one position compared to the London edition
• The sportiest Olympic nation? as in London, it is Usain Bolt’s Jamaica, ahead of New Zealand and Denmark. For all of these, the top three countries in the Rio Per Capita ranking, it took less than 10,000 citizens to score a point in Rio.
• Last but not least, congratulations to each and every one of the 119 countries which scored points at the Rio Olympics, four more than in London – alas only 100 fit on our website page, so below are the remaining 19, and none of them is worthier of a mention than the 119^th: Syria earned two points thanks to Majd Eddin Ghazal finishing 7^th in the Men’s High Jump. A sign of hope, we’d like to think.