With 103 medals the USA appeared to be the most successfully Olympic nation. This is not so surprising when you consider its superpower status. If you take into account the size and GNP of each country you get a very different result. This table puts the USA’s great enemy in first place. Cuba tops the economic table with just $1bn of GNP per medal. Well down the table was the UK ($55bn per medal). The USA was near the bottom with over $100bn per medal. It seems that American sanctions against Cuba is having an undesirable impact. Cuba also has a higher literacy rate and a lower infant-mortality rate that the USA.

Recently George Bush promised to overthrow Castro if he is re-elected. Maybe he would be better off sending a fact-finding team to Cuba to find out the secret of its success.

Is the table published on the Internet? I would like to read it.
One of the most reliable newspapers (not many of them) in Italy gave different results by taking into account the number of medals and the GNP of the countries.
Russia was first, followed by Australia and Cuba.
http://www.ilsole24ore.com/SoleOnLine3/Eco...=20.0.584974189
(In Italian, unfortunately)