Well... but total medals doesn't do it either. Basically, the really small nations result in a lot of outliers for all the reasons you mentioned.
But if you remove those, and then remove the Silver and Bronze for the reasons you mentioned (limitations on how many people you can send, etc), you get a much better vision of what's going on.
Doing that, with a 10 million population cut off gives you this for your top 20:
1. Netherlands
2. Great Britain
3. Australia
4. Greece
5. Cuba
5. Germany
7. Belgium
8. Kazakhstan
9. South Korea
10. France
11. Italy
12. Spain
13. The US
14. Canada
15. Kenya
16. Czech Republic
17. Japan
18. Russia
19. North Korea
20. Argentina
Increase the cut off to 30 million and your top 20 looks like this:
1. Great Brittain
2. Germany
3. South Korea
4. France
5. Italy
6. Spain
7. The US
8. Canada
9. Kenya
10. Japan
11. Russia
12. Argentina
13. Uzbekistan
14. Colombia
15. Poland
16. Ukraine
17. Iran
18. Thailand
19. Brazil
20. South Africa
Increase the cut off to 60 million and it looks like this:
1. Great Britain
2. Germany
3. France
4. Italy
5. The US
6. Japan
7. Russia
9. Iran
10. Thailand
11. Brazil
12. China
13. Vietnam
14. Ethiopia
15. Indonesia
You need to increase the cutoff to 82 million (Germany's pop is 81 million) to get the US to number 1:
1. The US
2. Japan
3. Russia
4. Brazil
5. China
6. Vietnam
7. Ethiopia
8. Indonesia
So, yes, the US is top of the heap in the nations that are closer in population to them... but there are dozens of other reasons why the US should wreck all of these countries in Olympic sport.
Put up against countries that the US should be expected to compete with based on socio-economic considerations, you are doing fine, but you aren't the top of the heap.
In fact, if we put the US head to head against the EU, the EU has a substantial lead both in raw numbers and per capita.
Prorated for population the EU (including Britain) has 1.6 Golds for every Gold won by the US.
Taking Britain out of the equation, the EU has 1.25 Golds for every Gold won by the US.
Any way you slice it, Britain is kicking ass among nations with a comparable socio-economic make-up, history, climate, et cetera, and the US is holding its own, but is basically an average player in comparison with its true pears.
Lmao you wrote a huge essay and completely missed that guys point.
Each country is only allowed to submit a certain number of participants to each event no matter the population.
This means even though the US could probably win all 3 medals in Basketball with 3 separate teams they aren't allowed and only get to send one team. The US has enough talent to make 3 teams as good as any other country's best team but are forced to condense to only 1.
This is why comparing population to medals is retarded. It would make sense if you were allowed to send as many competitors you wanted for each event as long as they qualify.
This hinders other countries like Russia too in wrestling because they have guys in the same weight class who are 1/2 in the world but are only allowed to send 1, when in reality if both were allowed to compete they'd probably both earn medals.
Think of it like this in terms of MMA here are the current top-10 at Light-Heavyweight.
1 - Jon Jones - USA
2 - Daniel Cormier - USA
3 - Anthony Johnson - USA
4 - Alexander Gustafson - SWE
5 - Ryan Bader - USA
6 - Ovince St. Preux - USA
7 - Shogun Rua - BRA
8 - Rashad Evans - USA
9 - Lil Nog - BRA
10 - Nikita Krylov - UKR
So if we wanted to have a mini-tournament with the four best LHW in a perfect world 3 would be from the US and one from Sweden.
But, in the Olympics only one person is allowed from each country, so even though the US has the top-3 LHW the tournament would instead be Jon Jones from US, Alexander from Sweden, Shogun from Brazil, and Krylov from Ukraine.
Thus the people winning silver and bronze, would likely lose to the US guys who didn't get an oppurtonity despite being better because of the per-country limit.
This is why comparing population to medal count makes no sense.
Of course this doesn't even get into the fact the best American athletes go into the NFL, NBA, MLB.
I mean fuck an Oregon football player who runs track in his off time almost won a medal this Olympics lmao.