The olympics is a brutal competition. every 4 year it brings together all the best of badminton country, force them to play tons of tournaments over a one year period just to be able to attend. and then within the span of 10 days, we force all qualified players to fight against each other, in the name and representing their respective countries. each country pays the utmost importance in it because it is national pride at stake. thus it makes it an interesting benchmark to see who are actually the worthy countries in badminton, and how they rise and fall over the years. and to illustrate that, i have created this little graph from all the prior Olympics till now, which give an interesting view of the overall strength. for 1992->2008, i used the actual medal count, for 2012, i use the current ranking, including the 4 semifinalists.
the Athens and Sydney assignment is reversed..? hard to tell from the color assignments..i guess it goes from China at the bottom all the way to the top with India ?
here is my analysis. China, as can tell, has consistently been at the top in the Olympics. while their feat of 4 Golds has not been repeated thus far, they consistently bags in 3 plus a bunch of other lesser ones. Korea has its up and down but never yet failed to go home without a medal. the total of 6 Gold shows that they are the second nation when it comes to badminton strength. Indonesia has a total of 6 Gold as well, but most of them were pre-2008 and in 2012 they surprisingly will not even win a single medal. showing a drastic downfall in strength. Denmark has only won 1 Gold before from Poul Erik Hoyer Larsen in Atlanta. since then they mostly been able to take in the fringe of 1 or no medals. Malaysia while has a similar total medal count compared to Denmark, they haven't been as consistent. bagging home zero in 2000/2004, and have never produced a Gold medal before. for 2012 they are guaranteed one medal and potentially a 2nd. India/Netherlands/Japan/England have or may win a medal or 2 before, but their performance don't show the same consistency as the other nations.