The 2024 Paris Olympic Games are right around the corner.

With fans getting ready to return to the stands in a post-covid world, this year’s edition of the Games is already shaping up to be more exciting than the rather subdued scenes in Tokyo last time ‘round.

Over here at Formula Bot, we’re as big on sports as we are on streamlining data analysis with AI. So, in anticipation of the upcoming Games, we decided to dig into over a century’s worth of Olympic data to unearth some cool insights into the largest sporting extravaganza on the planet. Ever wondered which countries dominate the most at each sport? Or the extent to which national GDP correlates with a country’s Olympic success? Read on to find out!

Data collection

The data analyzed in this article can be found on Kaggle (here and here) and the official IMF website. Using Formula Bot's Data Prep, we aggregated and organized the datasets in a single file, which can be downloaded here.

Which Countries Dominate Each Olympic Sport?

It’s well known that certain countries tend to do well at certain sports. Men’s basketball gold, for example, has traditionally been the U.S.’s to lose, while the Chinese have historically seen tremendous success in table tennis.

Those are two of the most salient examples, but what about across all Olympic sports? Which countries are the traditional powerhouses in, say, equestrian or cycling? Additionally, which sports are the most top-heavy, displaying the highest degree of dominance by its most successful nation?

To find out, we calculated the percentage of medals (gold, silver and bronze) claimed for every sport and nation from 1896 to 2020. We then extracted the single country with the highest percentage of (total) Olympic medals won for each sport. Here’s a visualization of the most dominant country in every Olympic sport:

Note: we excluded discontinued sports (e.g., tug-of-war) and sports with less than 5 total appearances at the Olympics (e.g., climbing) in our analyses. Moreover, sports officially categorized as disciplines of a broader sport were condensed into the parent sport (e.g., sprint canoeing and slalom canoeing are both represented under “Canoeing”) with the exception of the aquatics and volleyball disciplines, which we believed warranted individual representation due to popularity.

Here are some things we noticed:

• China’s success in table tennis is staggering, with the Asian giant claiming nearly half of all medals for the sport.

• The U.S. is the most dominant country in arguably three of the most popular sports at the Olympics: swimming, basketball, and athletics.

• Perhaps surprisingly, the U.S. is also historically the most successful nation in diving, a sport that has, in recent years, become associated with the Chinese Olympic tradition.

• Synchronized swimming is the only sport in which its most dominant nation (Russia) has exclusively won gold medals.

• Association football or soccer has had the most parity across history, with its most dominant nation (Brazil) claiming only ~9% of the available medals. Intuitively, we think this makes sense for a couple of reasons. Firstly, soccer is by far the most popular sport in the world, resulting in a large pool of competitive nations capable of medalling. Secondly, the Olympics play second fiddle to the World Cup (and even continental championships) when it comes to prestige in the world of international soccer, which means traditional powerhouses typically choose not to send their best squads, thus further increasing the pool of medal contenders.

Above all, perhaps the most striking observation is that this list is populated almost exclusively by rich, developed countries. Evidently, rich nations have a greater capacity for allocating the resources necessary to develop world class sporting talent. But does this trend hold up across the spectrum of economic and Olympic success?

Is There a Correlation Between National GDP and Olympic Success?

To find out if economic prosperity is related to Olympic success, we plotted national GDP per the International Monetary Fund (IMF) against total number of medals won across the last five Olympic Games, as seen below:

Across the last five Olympic Games, we can see a striking relationship between a nation’s nominal GDP and their Olympic medal output. Specifically, the correlation coefficient between the two variables was 0.83, indicating a very strong association.

As we might expect, the U.S. and China lead the pack, boasting both the two highest GDPs in the world as well as the two highest medal counts. They’re followed by a cluster of Western European nations in addition to other economic powerhouses in Russia, Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and South Korea.

Some trend buckers include India and Mexico, which both fall noticeably short in terms of medal output compared to the cluster of countries listed above despite sharing similar GPDs; and, conversely, Jamaica, which finds itself situated well above the trend line almost exclusively thanks to its strength in track and field.

Of course, GDP as a measure of economic prosperity is biased towards nations with large populations. It follows, then, that the observed relationship could be confounded by population, whereby larger pools of talent (rather than economic resources) are associated with greater Olympic success. Therefore, to assess the impact of economic prosperity more specifically, we also looked at the relationship between Olympic medal output and GDP per capita. Here’s the plot:

After controlling for population, we can see that the relationship between GDP and Olympic medal haul—while still significant—is much less pronounced than before (correlation of only 0.28). Notably, there’s a lot more noise on the right side of the plot, with small, high GDP per capita nations with low medal outputs balancing out the hefty medal hauls of larger, high GDP per capita nations.

The takeaway? Economic resources matter, but its influence appears to be constrained by the size of a country’s talent pool. Even some of the most developed nations in the world (e.g., Singapore and Iceland) fare far worse than much poorer countries due to their smaller populations (as well a host of other factors, to be sure).

Which Countries are the Most (and Least) Specialized in their Olympic Success?

In the previous section, we highlighted Jamaica as a country that has achieved well above its expected potential based on GDP due to its success in a single sport—track and field. Home to Olympic legend Usain Bolt, the small Caribbean nation regularly produces world-class sprinters on both the men’s and women’s side that rival (and often outclass) the mighty Americans. Elsewhere at the Games, the Jamaicans are rather... less prolific.

But exactly how much less prolific? What percentage of Jamaica’s total historical medal haul is comprised of medals in track? And what about other countries? Are there any countries that have only won medals in a single sport? Overall, which countries are the most and least specialized at the Olympic Games?

To find out, we calculated the percentages of each country’s total medal count accounted for by each sport. Then, for each country, we extracted the sport comprising the largest portion of its overall medal count and plotted the following graph:

Note: we included only countries that have won at least 50 medals across the history of the Olympics, both to create a more concise figure and to exclude one-time winners that would lead to inaccurate depictions of specialization (e.g., Burundi’s singular Gold in athletics).

As expected, Jamaica was right up there at the front of the pack: all but one of its Olympic medals have come from track and field. But it wasn’t the top dog when it came to hyper-specialization; that distinction went to Ethiopia, which has won 100% of its 58 total medals in track and field (and more specifically, in the long-distance events). Not far behind was East African neighbor Kenya, with distance events also making up almost 94% of its total medal haul.  

After that, there’s a discernible drop-off in specialization, with both Iran and Turkey claiming around 64% of their total medals from wrestling. Perhaps surprisingly, the U.S.—which tends to be competitive in practically every sport—also ranked rather highly in specialization, with 32% of its medal tally coming from track. Meanwhile, its powerhouse rival, China, placed almost dead last on our list, with only 13% of its medals coming from gymnastics.

Does Home Field (or Country) Advantage Exist at the Olympic Games?

Whether due to the confidence imparted by cheering fans or the comfort of a familiar environment, home field advantage is a well-documented phenomenon in sports.

But does the same advantage exist for the home country at the Olympic Games?

To find out, we took the total number of medals earned by a host nation at their host Games (or the average for countries that have hosted multiple times) and compared it to the average number of medals earned by that nation at every Olympics where they were not the host.

Across all 20 countries that have hosted the Olympics, the average medal haul at home was 66.5, while the average medal haul away was 22.2. That’s a whopping average difference of 44.3 medals—pretty convincing evidence for the existence of home field advantage at the Olympics.

The largest difference was found for the Soviet Union, which took home 195 medals at Moscow 1980 and an average of 101.9 medals at all other Games. It should be noted, however, that this edition of the Olympics was boycotted by the U.S. and 65 other countries, significantly reducing the level of competition. The Soviet Union aside, then, the largest discrepancy between home and away medal hauls was found for the U.S., which has claimed, on average, 152.3 medals at each of its host Games, while taking only 84.2 medals across all others.

The only countries that have won less medals as hosts are Canada (11 at Montreal 1976, average of 12.1 at all others) and West Germany (40 at Munich 1972, average of 41 across all others).

Conclusion

And there you have it! We hope you enjoyed our data dive into the Olympic Games, where we looked at national dominance, specialization, home field advantage, and the correlation between success and national GDP.

Bring on Paris 2024!