New Zealand's Top Olympic Town: Revealed

As part of the build-up to Rio 2016, the Herald, in association with ANZ, has been counting down New Zealand's top Olympic towns. Today, they revealed the winner - and it's Whanganui that fills the gold medal position on the chart!

The Herald analysed information about every summer Games medallist to come up with the 10 towns that have made the biggest contribution to Olympic glory.

The final position is the result of combining two rankings: the gold rank is based on the number of gold medals won by people born in each town and city, divided by current population; the Olympic rank is based on the number of medal-winning Olympians born in each town and city, divided by population. They averaged the rankings to get the final position.

Our top town, Whanganui, has a population of 43,500, according to 2015 figures from Statistics NZ. It's the birthplace of seven medal-winning Olympians, who have won seven medals, including three golds. Its gold rank is three and its Olympic rank one, giving an average of two.

THE TOP 10:
10. Whangarei
9. Christchurch
8. Rotorua
7. Ashburton
6. Nelson
5. Gisborne
4. Taumarunui
3. Timaru
2. Hastings
1. Whanganui

- NZ Herald