Research Report - What really influences a Nation's probabilty to win Olympic medals?
The Money Game:
What really influences a Nation´s probability to win Olympic medals
Keywords: Olympics, Olympic Games, Olympic Medals, Athletic Success, Population, Population Growth, Urbanity, Gross National Product
Abstract
Not a country's total population size predetermines its success in the Olympics, the country's Gross National Product (GNP) does. This is the result of analyzing the relations between four major characteristics (population, population growth, urbanity, and GNP) and the country's success in the Olympics (total number of medals). In total, we were able to include 15107 medals (bronze, silver, gold) that have been won by N=121 Nations within the past 45 Olympic Games. Contrary to our expectation, we did not find the country´s total population to show the strongest correlation with its Olympic success.
It can be argued that the probability to give birth, raise, select, and train top athletes within a country will increase with the size and the growth of its population (see e. g. Ball, 1972; Grimes, Kelly, & Rubin, 1974). Assuming that there is a constant prevalence rate of great athletes in each geographic region, the performance and success in major international sports competitions should depend mainly on the total population size. The more people live in country, the greater its potential for top athletes and for athletic success. A quick glance at the Olympic medal tables supports this assumption: Big countries, in terms of population, are mainly on the top of the list, e. g. United States, China, Russia, Australia, Germany, or Japan. The population size differs between these "big" countries considerably, still they are more equal to one another than e. g. to the Bahamas, Jamaica, Belarus, or Hungary.
This observation led to some alternative reports of the Olympic success in the media, like calculating Olympic medals per head of population (see graphic 1).
Graphic 1: Original and adjusted medal table of Athens Olympic 2004 (Online resource: The Economist, 2008, June 2)
Nonetheless which type of "corrective action" is used, it leads to the same result: The list of top scoring countries is reversed with those having a small population on the top and those with large populations at the end. There might be some (supposably socially motivated) sense to this type of report wrap-up especially if one wants to point out how much harder it is for a small community to breed athletes capable to compete international. However, there is definitely some sense to further investigation, too. The question to be addressed is whether it is really just the total population and its growth that determines whether a country is "small" or "big" in means of Olympic prospective. We investigated this question with the approach pointed out below.
Data and Method
We gathered various sources of Olympic medal tables and cross-validated the data obtained. Additionally, we used country reports to gather data on the four characteristics specified. In total, we were able to report Olympic medal data on N = 121 countries. As not all information on demographics (population size, population growth, urbanity, or GNP) were available from objective sources, the pair wise exclusion of cases resulted in a total sample size varying between N = 106 to N = 119 countries. We calculated bivariate Pearson correlations.
Results
The correlation table has been converted to a graphical representation (see graphic 2) for purposes of clarity. Please note that the arrows do not indicate any causality nor any dependencies, but relations that can be found between the variables.
The results show that the total popoluation size has weak to no relations with a country's success in the Olympics (r = .18, n. s.). However, its Gross National Product shows a strong positive relationship (r = .44; p < .01). It seems that the more productive a nation is in means of its economic welfare, the more medals can be expected in the Olympics. Furthermore, contrary to our expectations, the population growth correlates negatively with the number of medals (r = -.34; p < .01). The lower the population growth (or the higher its shrinkage), the more medals seem to be won. This may be partly explained by the high negative correlation between population growth and GNP (r = -.55; p < .01). Hence, a nation with a low population growth is in general more prosper. Urbanity is also correlated at r= .22 (p < .05) with the success at Olympics. As GNP and Urbanity are correlated to one another at r=.62 (p < .01), this linkage is not surprising.
Finally, the total population shows neither significant relations with population growth nor with economic prosperity.
Graphic 2: Correlation pattern within all variables (* indicates p < 0.05; ** indicates p < 0.01)
Discussion
It was expected to find strong relations between the total population and number of Olympic medals won. This was based on the assumption that the probability to "produce" top athletes should be higher for bigger and faster growing populations compared to small populations (e. g. Ball, 1972; Grimes, et al., 1974). Surprisingly, the resulting correlation of r = .18 is not even significant. Instead, we found that the GNP (r = .44; p < .01) shows the strongest link to Olympic success. In conclusion, the results indicate that success in Olympics has more to do with a nation´s economic performance and level of urbanity than with population size and growth - its pool of athletic talent. This connection could be explained by a higher possible funding for sports that comes with the economic wealth of a nation and forms the base for its international athletic success In other words, the increased ability of wealthier countries to provide comparatively better healthcare services, diet, focus on fitness, education, training, and facilities, leads to a higher likelihood of breeding superior athletes (see Bernhard & Busse, 2004, for a closer inspection).
In the end, our results indicate that the Olympics seem to be a mere "Money Game". Thus, in our opinion there is no use to calculate adjusted Olympic medal tables based upon populations (see graphic 1). It seems to be more useful and relevant, to compute adjusted tables based on GNP, e. g. indicating how many medals per $ GNP are won.
Limitations
There are some limitations to this little study. We did not differentiate between summer and winter Olympics and we did not take a nation-specific sport expertise into consideration that might be due to the natural given environment (e. g. cross-country skiing with the Scandinavians). Further research might address this issue and separate between these modalities (see for a first investigation and comparison: Johnson & Ali, 2004; Pfau, 2006). Additionally, the fact if a country is the host country of a particular event plays a role for its expected success as well (e. g. Bernhard & Busse, 2004). We did not control for a country´s public sports funding, the existence of elite sport systems and their professionalism (see Martin, Arin, Palakshappa, & Chetty, 2008). The political doctrine may play a role as well, as a nations reputation within the world community is at least somewhat determined by its positioning within sports. It could be argued that a government´s perspective on sports might not be mere sports interest but politically motivated (Ball, 1972; Grimes, et al., 1974). This is seen for example in the astonishing perfomance of the former Soviet Union.
One more important reason for the missing link between total popolation and Olympic success is already stated by Bernhard and Busse (2004) who mentioned that „countries cannot send athletes in proportion to their populations for each event, for example, in team competitions, where each country has at most one entry." (p. 413) The ceilings for a particular event set by the IOC hinder medal-caliber athletes, e. g. chinese world-class table-tennis players, to participate (Lui & Suen, 2008, p. 1) and actually forces some of them to migrate to smaller countries. If it was possible for a country to send as many athletes as possible and desired, probably making the Olympics last for years and years, would our initial expectation be approved?
Contact
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Bibliography
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Bernhard, A. W. & Busse, M. R. (2004). Who wins the Olympic games: Economic resources and medal totals. Review of Economics and Statistics, 86, 413-417.
Grimes, A. R. Jr., Kelly, W. J., & Rubin, P. H. (1974). A socioeconomic model of national Olympic performance. Social Science Quarterly, 55, 777-783.
Johnson, D. K. N. & Ali, A. (2004). A tale of two seasons: Participation and medal counts at the summer and winter Olympic games. Social Science Quarterly, 85, 974-993.
Lui, H.-K. & Suen, W. (2008). Men, money, and medals: An econometric analysis of the Olympic games. Pacific Economic Review, 13, 1-16.
Martin, S. G., Arin, K. P., Palakshappa, N., & Chetty, S. (2008). Do elite sports systems mean more Olympic medals? Retrieved July 14, 2008, from http://commerce.massey.ac.nz/research_outputs%5C2005/2005031.pdf
Pfau, W. D. (2006). Predicting the medal wins by country at the 2006 winter Olympic game: An econometrics approach. Retrieved August 13, 2008, from http://www3.grips.ac.jp/
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The Economist (2008, June 2). Top Olpympic countries - small is beautiful. Retrieved July 11, 2008, from http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/
displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=11484249
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