Female, 26.6 years old and Tasmanian: The perfect recipe for gold at the Games

Winning an Olympic medal is the crowning jewel of sporting achievements, requiring years of dedication. But an analysis of Australia’s Paris 2024 medallists showed that those of a certain age, sex, hometown, education and cultural background fared better than others.

If you’re a Fox from Camperdown, you’re in luck. If you like to swim in Queensland – even better.

This masthead broke down the demographics behind Australia’s success using data from the Australian Olympic Committee’s athlete profiles.

Team medals were evenly divided between those in a squad – for example, each of the four swimmers in a 100m freestyle relay would be credited 0.25 of a medal for their contribution. Once added up, analysis showed two states punched above their weight to carry Australia’s most successful Olympic campaign.

Queenslanders may have won the most gold – but one tiny state has bested them

Queensland just gets Origin, so we hear annually when the Maroons play the NSW Blues in the pinnacle of Australian rugby league. The Sunshine State seemingly understands the importance of winning the right to brag about dominating Australia’s Olympic medal haul, too. Without Queensland swimmers, the country would be toast.

Specifically, Australia should thank the likes of Caboolture’s Kaylee McKeown (gold in women’s 100m and 200m backstroke) and Brisbane’s Mollie O’Callaghan (gold in women’s 200m freestyle, 4x100m freestyle relay and 4x200m freestyle relay). Three-quarters of the 4x100m freestyle relay teams also hail from Queensland.

Gold Coast skateboarders Keegan Palmer (gold in men’s park) and Arisa Trew (gold in women’s park) also did their bit. Queensland kayakers Jackson Collins (silver in men’s canoe sprint fours) and Tom Green (bronze in men’s canoe sprint pairs) added to the state’s minor medal tally, which was almost double that of the next-best jurisdiction.

NSW had Jessica and Noemie Fox to boost their medal count. A water polo team almost exclusively from Sydney’s more affluent suburbs and Queensland helped swell their result, too.

Elsewhere, Western Australia was the third-best state for medals. Margaret River’s Jack Robinson (silver in men’s surfing), Perth tennis pro Matthew Ebden (gold in men’s doubles) and rower Annabelle McIntyre (bronze in women’s pairs) all helped. Sam Welsford, Conor Leahy and Matthew Richardson were among a crop of Perth locals to win silver in track cycling during the Games’ second week.

But Victoria had a disappointing showing for its size, despite the efforts of Melburnian Jemima Montag (bronze in women’s 20km and marathon race walk), Leongatha’s Eleanor Patterson (bronze in high jump) and several female basketballers.

South Australia struggled as well. Port Lincoln swimmer Kyle Chalmers (silver in men’s 100m freestyle) and track cyclist Matthew Glaetzer (bronze in men’s keirin) were the state’s only individual medallists. In team competitions, several South Australians helped the Opals to bronze in women’s basketball too. Cyclists Leigh Hoffman (bronze in men’s team sprint) and Oliver Bleddyn (gold in men’s team pursuit) won medals in team cycling events, too.

However, when adjusted for population, the story begins to change.

Tasmania has contributed the most to Australia’s Olympic medal tally, pound-for-pound, with one gold medal per 461,092 people. One in every 164,676 Tasmanians claimed silverware in France, too.

Much of the tiny state’s success can be attributed to decorated Launceston swimmer Ariarne Titmus, who secured two gold medals (women’s 400m freestyle and 4x200m freestyle relay) and two silver medals (women’s 200m and 800m freestyle).

Per capita, Queensland ranks as Australia’s second-best Olympic state, with one gold medal per 802,274 people and one medal of any type for every 302,047 Queenslanders. Meanwhile, the only South Australian to win gold was part of the four-strong men’s pursuit team, meaning the state only adds 0.25 to Australia’s gold tally and thus averages only one gold medal contribution per 7,539,772 people – the worst rate in Australia.

The tiny Victorian town that boasts more medals than India

It’s fair to say the Fox family has had a decent couple of weeks. Jessica carried Australia’s flag, broke her run of near-misses in the kayak and went back-to-back in the canoe, while younger sister Noemie stunned the Olympic field with a gold medal in the kayak cross.

If the family ever wants to secede from the Commonwealth, they needn’t worry too much about their achievements being buried down the medal tally. As a family, they placed 29th with three gold medals. That’s just ahead of Azerbaijan (population 10 million), which won two golds.

The small Victorian town of Camperdown (population 3354) would also be a formidable sporting force if the dairy farmers in the state’s south-west stage a rebellion. Thanks to the early success of Grace Brown (gold in cycling) and Penny Smith (bronze in shooting), the People’s Republic of Camperdown was in the top 20 of the medal tally in the Olympics’ first week. Despite a fall as more athletes competed, the town’s hit rate of one medal per 1677 people isn’t too bad, plus it finished higher than India (population 1.4 billion).

Something in the water in Australia’s private school pools

Australian private school alumni won twice as many Paris Olympic medals (58.5) compared to those educated in the public system (27.5). That’s despite privately educated students accounting for just 36 per cent of all Australian school enrolments.

Ten members of Australia’s women’s water polo team attended private high schools, mainly in Brisbane and Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Of the three Stingers players who didn’t, one – Danijela Jackovich – attended a public school in the United States – Chicago’s Lincoln-Way Central. Medal-winning swimmers overwhelmingly (17 out of 19) had the means to attend typically expensive private schools, too.

Blaxland High School graduates Jessica and Noemie Fox helped boost public numbers, too, as did Albion Park High School alumna Jessica Hull and Murray High School’s Lauren Jackson.

Opals medallists Cayla George, Isobel Borlase and Marianna Tolo attended both private and public high schools – hence their contributions were evenly divided between the public and private medallist tallies.

Women lead Australia to most successful Olympics

Women accounted for 61.6 per cent of Australia’s 86 medallists, a share boosted by the success of the women’s water polo and basketball teams. Of Australia’s 18 gold medals, women won 13 and men won five.

Mollie O’Callaghan has the most silverware, thanks to four relay medals and one individual gold in the women’s 200m freestyle. Kaylee McKeown can claim she did the most single-handedly to boost Australia’s medal count, winning two individual backstroke events, finishing third in a medley, and swimming in two medal-winning relays.

Among Australia’s male medallists, track cyclists stood out, including the gold medal-winning men’s team pursuit quartet of Oliver Bleddyn, Sam Welsford, Conor Leahy and Kelland O’Brien. Matthew Richardson contributed the most of any male to Australia’s total tally due to silver medals in the sprint and keirin, plus a bronze in the team sprint.

The 29-year age gap between Australia’s oldest, youngest medallists

The Paris 2024 team’s youngest Olympian, Arisa Trew, (born in 2010) became the youngest Australian medallist when the 14-year-old won gold in the women’s park skateboarding event. Other teen medallists include Flynn Southam (silver and bronze in men’s 4x100m and 4x100 freestyle relays, respectively) and Sienna Green (silver in women’s water polo).

Basketball legend Lauren Jackson, 43, is Australia’s oldest medallist after the Opals’ bronze medal on Sunday night (AEST).

The average age of an Australian Olympic medallist is 26.6 years old.

The medallists who weren’t born here

Overseas-born Australians are underrepresented among Australia’s medallists compared to the general population. However, this is not unprecedented – only citizens can wear the green and gold at the Olympics, while the broader population figure includes millions of non-citizen residents.

Place of birth also doesn’t completely reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of Australia’s medallists. For example, BMX gold-medallist Saya Sakakibara was born on the Gold Coast but lived in Japan for the first few years of her life (her mother is Japanese).

Still, Australian medallists are overwhelmingly of European ancestry. The only athlete born in Asia was Joshua Yong, who spent the early part of his life in Brunei. Others born overseas include the Fox sisters (France), swimmer Thomas Neill (Hong Kong), cyclist Matthew Richardson (England), skateboarder Keegan Palmer (United States), basketballer Ezi Magbegor (New Zealand), and the van der Westhuyzen brothers, a pair of canoeists from South Africa.

Surpassed by New Zealand? The not-so-convenient scoreboard tweak

The US was inevitably going to be near the top of the Olympic medal table. However, perhaps because other countries were occasionally ahead of them earlier in the Games, some US media outlets, such as ESPN, opted to rank countries based on their total medals, rather than total golds, as is customary.

In the spirit of convenient scoreboard tweaks, a per-capita gold-medal adjustment would propel Australia past the might of the US and China – but New Zealand would benefit more.

The Kiwis recorded one gold medal for every 522,310 people, finishing third on the pound-for-pound rankings behind the tiny Caribbean islands of Dominica and Saint Lucia.

Given Australia finished fourth on the traditional Olympic tally, we should stick to the conventional way of doing things.

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