The sad truth is, however you try to distort the statistics, Australia didn’t do well at the Olympics. 

We should abolish academic studies immediately and get our students onto the sports fields. We also need to ask whether it’s essential Wayne Swan gets the budget back into surplus. It seemed important at the time, but this is a national crisis. I mean, the country just narrowly scraped in to the top ten. What does this mean for Australian national identity?

I tried to manipulate the statistics, but the best place I can bring Australia out at is ninth. That’s only one place up on the official rankings, based on the number of gold medals (won, of course, by the USA).

But Australia got lots of silver. It’s as if our athletes new that gold was over-valued at the moment and, fearing a bubble, held back on their respective events. That must be it. After all, we’ve spent millions on these elite athletes. It can’t be anything to do with ability.

So, given that we have so many medals in total, lets rank the countries on a points system: 3 for gold, 2 for silver, 1 for bronze. On that basis Australia moves up one spot, to 9th place. It doesn’t do too much to the top of the table, except for pushing Team GB down to 4th place behind Russia.

Then, of course, we need to factor in population. It’s hardly fair that a country of less than 23 million people should be compared to China’s 1.3 billion or so.

To compensate, let’s adjust the table to show number of points per million people. All of a sudden the powerhouses like the US and China fall out of the top 20. Poor Team GB are down in 13th place, well below Australia, still placed ninth.

However much money General John Coates needs, he should have it

By this approach Jamaica, a country of just 2.7 million people, is a clear winner, attaining 8.8 points per million people. New Zealand, with 5.6 points per million, came in second. Australia has just 2.9 points.

Now, I did try to combine the New Zealand and Australia results, given that anyting good that comes out of Kiwiland is always claimed as Aussie, but to no avail. It’s still not enough to catch up with the winning lead that Bolt created from the Caribbean.

Australians will take some solice from the fact that they did beat the poms, but only in a minor-league kind of way. It’s a bit like getting excited because Darlington beat Colchester United.

Of course, for Australia, the national identity is at stake. The pysche of the country is dependent on beating everyone at sport. The only answer is to close our schools, carpet-bomb McDonalds franchises and introduce regimented training exercises from pre-school. However much money General John Coates needs, he should have it. In the meantime, let us introduce a new public holiday, when we can march solemly and future generations can remember our defeat at London 2012.

PS Did someone forget to tell the Canadians it was on?