If you look at the statistics for medals per country, they’re quite strongly correlated with numbers of athletes sent. This makes sense because a given athlete can only win 1 medal in 1 event and if you don’t send an athlete to an event you have no chance to win a medal.
This is also the main reason for the host country medal bump: host country’s athletes automatically qualify for a lot of spots in the events. This means they can send more athletes than they otherwise would, so they win more medals than usual.
If you look at the statistics for medals per country, they’re quite strongly correlated with numbers of athletes sent. This makes sense because a given athlete can only win 1 medal in 1 event and if you don’t send an athlete to an event you have no chance to win a medal.
This is also the main reason for the host country medal bump: host country’s athletes automatically qualify for a lot of spots in the events. This means they can send more athletes than they otherwise would, so they win more medals than usual.