GEORGIE PARKER: Ariarne Titmus leads early Australian Paris Olympic Games 2024 charge as rich nations dominate

Whether you stay up late to watch the Olympic Games, or just wake up to the results every morning there’s one thing we all want to know – how many gold medals has Australia won.

It’s the way countries judge their performance and fund their sports.

The medal tally has a common theme every Games, the rich countries do the best.

We start with Australia in the pool; it’s where we win the majority of our gold medals.

The USA make a big splash in the pool too with our decades-long rivalry a Games highlight every four years.

But the Americans quickly move past us as the Games progress - as they should with a population of 333 million - once the first week is over and their track and field and gymnastics teams take over.

Great Britain, a proud Olympic nation, dominate cycling and athletics, Russia, with their questionable ethics, is always at the top, as is China, who, along with their enormous population, economically have a huge advantage.

It’s obviously not always the case that you have to be rich to win. Of course, there are countries who aren’t wealthy but manage to succeed. These athletes have genetic super powers like Ethiopia and Kenya whose athletes seem just born to run. But, overall, money seems to be able to buy plenty of medals.

The nations that can’t compete against the sporting superpowers rightly take pride in taking home the silver and bronze medals.

Piers Morgan posted on X “If you’re someone who thinks silver and bronze medals constitute winning, you need to stay well away… you can celebrate losing if you like, but I only care about (gold medal emoji)”.

While this may be the case for wealthy countries like Australia, USA and Great Britain, I can’t imagine this is the mindset for athletes from Ukraine, Palestine, or of course, those representing the Refugee Olympic team where for some simply making it to Paris is a gold-medal effort in itself.

For me, the Olympics are a great reminder of privilege. We are so lucky to be able to do what we do in a country that supports us. We have access to top of the art equipment and sports scientists (remember Eric the Eel had never seen an Olympic swimming pool before he got to Sydney). Of course there is the obvious privilege of wealth, but it can come in plenty of forms like being able bodied, gender, and just simple geography.

So sit back, enjoy the Games and marvel at the incredible athletes from across the globe vie to get a spot on that hallowed podium though remember there is probably someone out there who could have been the next Usain Bolt but lives in a country that has bigger things on their mind than learning the most efficient running technique.