PwC
*connectedthinking
Economics
Economic Briefing Paper:
Modelling Olympic Performance*
PricewaterhouseCoopers – June 2008
1
Economic Briefing Paper: Modelling Olympic performance
Executive Summary
As a light-hearted contribution to the debate on likely medal tallies in Beijing, this paper presents some
analysis on the determinants of past Olympic performance and uses this to produce some benchmarks
against which performance at the Beijing 2008 Olympics can be judged.
The following factors were found to be statistically significant in explaining the number of medals won
by each country at previous Olympic Games since 1988:
•
population;
•
average income levels (measured by GDP per capita at PPP exchange rates);
• whether the country was previously part of the former Soviet/communist bloc (including Cuba
and China);
• whether the country is the host nation; and
• medal shares in the previous Olympic Games.
In general, the number of medals won increases with the population and economic wealth of the
country, but less than proportionately: David can sometimes beat Goliath in the Olympic arena,
although superpowers like the US, China and Russia continue to dominate at the top of the medal
table.
Many countries from the former Soviet bloc continued to outperform relative to the size of their
economies at the Athens 2004 Olympics, despite it being held 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
This effect is expected to continue to be evident at Beijing, although it could fade gradually over time.
We can see a similar effect at work in China, where state support has boosted Olympic performance:
sport it seems is one area where a planned economy can succeed!
There is a marked contrast between the success of China and the performance of India, which won
only one medal in the Athens Olympics (the same as at Sydney), despite having a population of over a
billion. The explanation seems to lie in India’s passionate love of cricket, which is not an Olympic sport
but may attract