How the Old Empires Did at London 2012

Here's a bit of fun, if you're interested in history and organising things into tables. Which is much more my cup of tea than watching sport, to be honest.

My dad wanted to know where the USSR would stand in the final medal table, if it was still a country today. The 15 independent post-Soviet states, which seceded from the USSR in 1991, are: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. (See if you can guess which of those spellings I had to copy and paste.) They all sent teams to London 2012.  Here's what we came up with:

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At London 2012, the USA won the most medals: 46 golds and 104 medals altogether.  So in this imaginary scenario, the former Soviet Union would slide into the top spot, with 47 golds and 164 medals in all.

EDIT: A shot-putter from Belarus has had her gold medal revoked and a Russian athlete has moved up from bronze to silver accordingly. Amendment to the table:
Russian Federation:  Gold 24, Silver 26, Bronze 32, Total 82
Belarus:  Gold 2, Silver 5, Bronze 5, Total 12
Former USSR:  Gold 46, Silver 45, Bronze 72, Total 163
So in our scenario, USA and USSR draw with an equal number of golds, although the Soviets still come out on top with 163 medals in all.

~o~

After we'd worked that out, I wondered how the medal table would look if various countries still belonged to the Victorian British Empire. This was slightly more complex to work out, because the Empire fluctuated a lot over time, so I selected countries that were part of the Empire in 1896, the year of the first modern Olympic Games. (This means we must leave out Kuwait's bronze medal, as Kuwait came under British protection in 1899. Actually many of the 'from' dates in the table are imprecise for historical reasons, but they're good enough for this purpose.)

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A smash hit, as the British Empire knocks the spots off all comers: 55 golds and a whopping 185 medals in total.  The vast population the Empire had to choose from would, however, give them a massive advantage.  Although Victorians would've been perfectly happy with the headstart this would give Britannia in the fields of trade and industry, they might have recognised that in the world of sport, this wouldn't really be fair play (see Caveat 1).

EDIT:  Because of the news item above, New Zealand have had a silver upgraded to a gold.  Amendment to the table:
New Zealand: Gold 6, Silver 2, Bronze 5, Total 13
Empire: Gold 56, Silver 56, Bronze 73, Total 185

~o~

Caveat 1: As my dad pointed out, the British Empire has never actually competed as a single entity: in the first Games, athlete Edwin Flack was listed as Australian; Cypriot results were counted as wins for Greece. In the 1936 Games, Canada and India entered as separate National Olympic Committees. So there's no point in time when all these medals would really have counted for Team GB, or Team BE.

Caveat 2: Obviously independence and self-determination are a Good Thing, so I don't want anyone thinking I made this table in a flurry of nationalistic nostalgia. Certainly it's a triumph for Jamaica that their runners have done brilliantly in their 50th year of independence, and it would be in poor taste to try and nab those wins for Queen Victoria. I just think it's interesting to see whether current medal behemoths USA and China could be beaten if other countries clubbed together. A hypothetical historical puzzle!