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Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service this week.

We pass our slide rule over the opening bars of some great music.

But first, where are all the USA's Paralympic Gold medals?

The United States topped the Olympics medal table with 46 gold medals this year.

But you have to go to one, two, three, four, five, sixth place to find them in the Paralympic medal table,

having won 24 gold medals with only a couple of days to go.

It's quite a puzzle because the US has two of the big vital ingredients for success.

According to Simon Shibbley, a professor of sports management at Sheffield-Hallam University in the UK.

For the Olympic Games, population and GDP probably explain about 53% of a nation's success.

But for the Paralympics, I think it's probably closer to 60 plus percent.

The US's large population means it should have a big pool of talent to fish from,

and it's wealthy, so it's got good healthcare and it can afford to spend money on sports training and facilities.

And another odd thing is that if you look at the historical figures,

the US is actually top of the all-time Paralympic gold medal league table.

Now we've discovered this is partly because the US dominated in the 80s,

when there were twice as many medals to win.

In the 1984 Paralympics, there were 345 gold medals for swimming,

and 447 gold medals for athletics.

But in the last few games, the United States Paralympic ranking has slipped behind its Olympic ranking.

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