Rio 2016: The Olympic results table where Britain is above the United States

Team GB may be in second place to the United States in the official Olympic medal table, but according to an alternative results calculation, the UK is actually far ahead of the world superpower.

The United States has won 93 medals in total at the Rio 2016 games, of which 30 are gold – nearly double the 50 medals with 19 golds taken by Laura Trott, Mo Farah and their teammates so far.

But when the relative population of each country is taken into account, the tables tell a very different story, with the US ranked only 42nd out of 79 participating nations.

Great Britain is in 17th place according to website Medals Per Capita, which adds perspective to the Olympic results by adjusting the rankings to take account of a country’s size.

This puts Team GB above their closest rivals Russia, in 38th place, Germany, at 36th, and China, the world’s most populated nation, lagging near the bottom of the table in 71st place.

The site, created by New Zealander Craig Nevill-Manning, also ranks countries’ medals by GDP, as “it's a little unfair to ignore the relative wealth of countries”.

At the top of Mr Nevill-Manning's ‘total medals per capita’ table is Grenada, whose one medal – runner Kirani James’s silver in the men’s 10,000m – puts the tiny island nation of just over 100,000 people in first place.

New Zealand, in third place, is also a contender for the world’s true sporting greats with 10 medals won by a population of 4.6 million, despite being only 16th in the official table.

And Slovenia has won four medals, putting the country of two million in fourth place compared to 38th in the official table.

Other countries whose strong performance in relation to their size is overlooked in the official standings include the Bahamas with one medal, Denmark, in 7th place compared to 35th in the official table, and Jamaica, which has jumped up 10 places from 15th to 5th.

Jamaica's star runner Usain Bolt won his third 100m gold on Sunday night, crossing the finish line in 9.81 seconds.

When restricted to gold medals only, Great Britain ranks even higher in relation to its population of 65 million, just behind Australia in 13th place.

However, despite its 321 million potential athletes, the United States is only in 32nd place in the 'gold medals per capita' table.

And when the countries are ranked by both the New York Times’s medal weighting system and relative wealth, the US is even further down the rankings at 61st.

This puts it among to other relatively low-performing countries compared to their high GDP, such as Norway, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.

Grenada also leads the table ranked by medal weighting and GDP, followed by Fiji, Armenia, Jamaica and North Korea, with Great Britain in 29th place.