I was tempted to dig up some population numbers and make an infographic, but someone already went further and is maintaining a web site updated daily. All those medal leaderboards always strike me...
I was tempted to dig up some population numbers and make an infographic, but someone already went further and is maintaining a web site updated daily.
All those medal leaderboards always strike me as silly when comparing dramatically different population sizes, both in the countries themselves and the number of athletes they send.
It looks exactly like the project of someone who thought the same way. Not in a bad way but the layout and the templated graphs give it that hint. The only thing I'd like to see added would be...
It looks exactly like the project of someone who thought the same way. Not in a bad way but the layout and the templated graphs give it that hint. The only thing I'd like to see added would be like you said some info about the number of athletes. Maybe "medals per athlete sent" or "athletes per population or gdp" could be interesting to see.
I would really like to see these numbers. Some countries are represented by a huge number of athletes. In some cases these countries had more than one athlete in the same competition (for example...
medals per athlete sent
I would really like to see these numbers. Some countries are represented by a huge number of athletes. In some cases these countries had more than one athlete in the same competition (for example the women's fencing sabre finals had two French women competing against each other).
I presume each event has entry criteria one has to meet? Or can countries submit any number up to a max of athletes to compete in events? I guess paying to field the athletes costs money but...
I presume each event has entry criteria one has to meet? Or can countries submit any number up to a max of athletes to compete in events? I guess paying to field the athletes costs money but surely not enough that it would limit things. I know team GB didn't send a men's duo sculling crew because they didn't think they'd win. I tried finding the answer but it was just listicles of how many total this year.
Edit: above is a bit rambly. I guess what I'm trying to find out is how do countries get the number of athletes in the competition that they get
It's a good question and I personally don't know the answer. I know reddit is not exactly a reliable source but someone asked the same question a few years ago and the answers indicate it depends...
It's a good question and I personally don't know the answer. I know reddit is not exactly a reliable source but someone asked the same question a few years ago and the answers indicate it depends on the rules for each sport and whether athletes qualify or not:
For gymnastics for example, there's a two per country cap for a given discipline (not a fan of the tone of the article but it's one example I found).
On a sidenote, I did read an interesting article recently that indicated that population size, GDP, and investment in the athletes can have a significant influence on a given country's olympic success. To me it feels like ranking countries without taking these factors into consideration is somewhat unfair, but I imagine calculating in a way that is 'fair' is not easy.
Was curious, so went to digging into IOC's official docs since I couldn't find a list either, amounts are generally per event and per gender unless specified or it's a single sex event, numbers...
Exemplary
Was curious, so went to digging into IOC's official docs since I couldn't find a list either, amounts are generally per event and per gender unless specified or it's a single sex event, numbers are max athletes not max teams in team/group sports:
Event
Max Athletes per event
Archery
3
Artistic Gymnastics
1
Artistic Swimming
8
Athletics
3
Team Athletics
2
Relay Athletics
1
Badminton
8
Basketball
12
International Basketball Federation
4
International Volleyball Federation
2
BMX Racing
3
BMX Freestyle
2
Boxing
6 Women/7 Men
Breaking
2
Canoe Slalom
3
Canoe Sprint
6 Kayak/3 Canoe
Diving
8
Dressage
1 Individual or Team of 3
Eventing
2 Individual or Team of 3
Jumping
1 Individual or Team of 3
Fencing
9
Football
18
Golf
4
Handball
14
Hockey
16
Judo
7
Marathon Swimming
2
Modern Pentathlon
2
Mountain Bike
2
Rhythmic Gymnastics
2 Individual/Group of 5
Road Cycling
4
Rowing
24 Individual/1 Boat
Rugby Sevens
12
Sailing
7
Shooting
12
Skateboarding
20 Park/20 Street/6 Event
Climbing Boulder & Lead
2
Climbing Speed
2
Surfing
2/3 w/certain qualifications
Swimming
26/2 per event/1 team per relay
Table Tennis
3/2 Singles/2 Doubles/3 Team
Taekwondo
16/4 per event
Tennis
6/4 singles/2 teams per Doubles/1 team per Mixed Doubles
Trampoline
2/1 (3 countries get to send 2 athletes, all others only get to send 1)
Triathlon
3
Track
7/8 (7 athletes if not sending other athlete to Cycling event, 8 if so) (breaking down individual track events over the next few lines, totals are on this line)
I was thinking about this while watching South Sudan play USA in basketball. In terms of points scored per capita/GDP/any metric, South Sudan's players did a great job (although some of them did...
I was thinking about this while watching South Sudan play USA in basketball. In terms of points scored per capita/GDP/any metric, South Sudan's players did a great job (although some of them did play college basketball in the USA). Regardless, these guys put up 86 points against a team with Lebron, Durant, Curry, Anthony... they did great against an all-star team.
I've also seen at least one article worried that the USA wasn't getting enough gold medals this time around. While more is always better (and the USA leads the medal rankings numerically), that really shouldn't be the only takeaway from the Olympics. I love seeing small countries get medals and I like seeing countries with high-performing teams have consecutive successes (like in men's gymnastics or team épée).
Not to take anything away from the South Sudan team, who are a really cool positive story about overcoming adversity. But at the end of the day, it's a diaspora team. Nearly every single player on...
Not to take anything away from the South Sudan team, who are a really cool positive story about overcoming adversity. But at the end of the day, it's a diaspora team. Nearly every single player on the team emigrated to a rich Western country in their childhood. They learned basketball in Canada, the US, and Australia. They had access to resources that most Africans, or people from low GDP countries in general, did not.
Not that having to flee a civil war as a young child isn't a harrowing and difficult experience. Far from it! I'm really hoping the South Sudan team does well and brings joy and pride to their people. But if we're talking about things like GDP compared to performance, it's not really fair to compare a team assembled almost entirely out of emigrants who developed their athletic skills with the help of their much richer new homeland's resources, to one that is "homegrown".
GDP would be cool, but I also wonder what other socioeconomic factors could be considered. Per capita income, or median income, or Gini index as it relates to local cost of living. I'd imagine the...
GDP would be cool, but I also wonder what other socioeconomic factors could be considered. Per capita income, or median income, or Gini index as it relates to local cost of living. I'd imagine the higher proportion of a country that has the free time to practice athletics instead of working will fare better at the Olympics. i'd guess a high Per capita income and a high Gini index would equate to high levels of athletes competing.
Makes you wonder how many people living under oppressive regimes, or in places without the free time and equipment to practice these athletics have we missed over the years. Like, maybe the best pole vaulter the world has ever seen was born and died as an unknown in a rundown factory town, having never even tried vaulting, without access to a track nor a thought of doing athletics "for fun". Although China would maybe be an outlier? Does it seem to anyone else like they've got some GMO (except H for Humans instead of Organisms) stuff going on with their athlete program?
Don't know about now, but it used to be that China was extremely organized and focused on fostering the development and training of young athletes as a matter of national pride and prestige. They...
Don't know about now, but it used to be that China was extremely organized and focused on fostering the development and training of young athletes as a matter of national pride and prestige. They have an entire national education system full of kids who might be the next stars and the government was motivated to find them
Very cool that this has historical records. Per capita, Norway is unbelievably dominant in the winter Olympics - although their number might be considered inflated by the huge number of...
Very cool that this has historical records. Per capita, Norway is unbelievably dominant in the winter Olympics - although their number might be considered inflated by the huge number of cross-country ski categories.
I was tempted to dig up some population numbers and make an infographic, but someone already went further and is maintaining a web site updated daily.
All those medal leaderboards always strike me as silly when comparing dramatically different population sizes, both in the countries themselves and the number of athletes they send.
It looks exactly like the project of someone who thought the same way. Not in a bad way but the layout and the templated graphs give it that hint. The only thing I'd like to see added would be like you said some info about the number of athletes. Maybe "medals per athlete sent" or "athletes per population or gdp" could be interesting to see.
I would really like to see these numbers. Some countries are represented by a huge number of athletes. In some cases these countries had more than one athlete in the same competition (for example the women's fencing sabre finals had two French women competing against each other).
I presume each event has entry criteria one has to meet? Or can countries submit any number up to a max of athletes to compete in events? I guess paying to field the athletes costs money but surely not enough that it would limit things. I know team GB didn't send a men's duo sculling crew because they didn't think they'd win. I tried finding the answer but it was just listicles of how many total this year.
Edit: above is a bit rambly. I guess what I'm trying to find out is how do countries get the number of athletes in the competition that they get
It's a good question and I personally don't know the answer. I know reddit is not exactly a reliable source but someone asked the same question a few years ago and the answers indicate it depends on the rules for each sport and whether athletes qualify or not:
https://www.reddit.com/r/olympics/comments/ow1owk/why_are_there_multiple_same_countries_athletes/
For gymnastics for example, there's a two per country cap for a given discipline (not a fan of the tone of the article but it's one example I found).
On a sidenote, I did read an interesting article recently that indicated that population size, GDP, and investment in the athletes can have a significant influence on a given country's olympic success. To me it feels like ranking countries without taking these factors into consideration is somewhat unfair, but I imagine calculating in a way that is 'fair' is not easy.
Was curious, so went to digging into IOC's official docs since I couldn't find a list either, amounts are generally per event and per gender unless specified or it's a single sex event, numbers are max athletes not max teams in team/group sports:
Amazing, did you put this table together yourself? Thank you for sharing!!
Yes, had some free time before a meeting at work, wanted to know the limits as well, so tossed it up here for others to find quickly.
Wow that must have taken some serious digging!! Thanks for doing that!
There are Olympic qualifying standards in many, if not all, sports. Of course, there are exceptions that enable cases like Eric the Eel.
I was thinking about this while watching South Sudan play USA in basketball. In terms of points scored per capita/GDP/any metric, South Sudan's players did a great job (although some of them did play college basketball in the USA). Regardless, these guys put up 86 points against a team with Lebron, Durant, Curry, Anthony... they did great against an all-star team.
I've also seen at least one article worried that the USA wasn't getting enough gold medals this time around. While more is always better (and the USA leads the medal rankings numerically), that really shouldn't be the only takeaway from the Olympics. I love seeing small countries get medals and I like seeing countries with high-performing teams have consecutive successes (like in men's gymnastics or team épée).
Not to take anything away from the South Sudan team, who are a really cool positive story about overcoming adversity. But at the end of the day, it's a diaspora team. Nearly every single player on the team emigrated to a rich Western country in their childhood. They learned basketball in Canada, the US, and Australia. They had access to resources that most Africans, or people from low GDP countries in general, did not.
Not that having to flee a civil war as a young child isn't a harrowing and difficult experience. Far from it! I'm really hoping the South Sudan team does well and brings joy and pride to their people. But if we're talking about things like GDP compared to performance, it's not really fair to compare a team assembled almost entirely out of emigrants who developed their athletic skills with the help of their much richer new homeland's resources, to one that is "homegrown".
GDP would be cool, but I also wonder what other socioeconomic factors could be considered. Per capita income, or median income, or Gini index as it relates to local cost of living. I'd imagine the higher proportion of a country that has the free time to practice athletics instead of working will fare better at the Olympics. i'd guess a high Per capita income and a high Gini index would equate to high levels of athletes competing.
Makes you wonder how many people living under oppressive regimes, or in places without the free time and equipment to practice these athletics have we missed over the years. Like, maybe the best pole vaulter the world has ever seen was born and died as an unknown in a rundown factory town, having never even tried vaulting, without access to a track nor a thought of doing athletics "for fun". Although China would maybe be an outlier? Does it seem to anyone else like they've got some GMO (except H for Humans instead of Organisms) stuff going on with their athlete program?
Don't know about now, but it used to be that China was extremely organized and focused on fostering the development and training of young athletes as a matter of national pride and prestige. They have an entire national education system full of kids who might be the next stars and the government was motivated to find them
Very cool that this has historical records. Per capita, Norway is unbelievably dominant in the winter Olympics - although their number might be considered inflated by the huge number of cross-country ski categories.