Olympics medals and participation

Tables on medals & participation for Winter & Summer games since 1990

• Winter games are smaller. Since 1990, winter games have seen only about half as many countries, and a quarter as many participants and medals as summer games.
• High and upper income countries dominate both summer and winter games, but winter more. Most high income countries compete in both summer and winter. Most low and lower income countries compete in summer only.
• High income dominance is even more striking in terms of participants (63% summer, 85% winter) and medals won (66% summer, 94% winter).
• Almost all European and Central Asia countries compete in both Summer and Winter games.

  Count of countries, participants, events for games

  • http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/summer/
  • http://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/winter/

  Medals and country income

  Medals and country income - both log scales

  Notes:

  • Summer exceptions - Although low-income countries, Ethiopia (35) and Kenya (55) have won significant numbers of medals since 1990, particularly in long distance running. Ukraine?
  • Data: medals1.xls
  • Data: olym_inc.js
    Line key is three-letter country abbreviation.
    nam= name. reg= region. gnp= $income per capita. gnpe= log(gnp).
    inc= income category. pop= population.
    w= 1 if any winter olympic participation since 1990s. otherwise 0 ;
    s= 1 if any summer olympic participation since 1990s. otherwise 0 ;
    wp, sp= participants in winter, summer events.
    wt, st= total medals in winter, summer events.

• Sources:

  • www.sports-reference.com - Url needs to be in credit. For country, medal and participation counts.
  • World Bank - For country income, population and region.
  • "Economic Prediction of Medal Wins at the 2014 Winter Olympics," Madeleine Andreff and Wladimir Andreff - for snowfall and resorts.

  Olympics gender and age

  This data covers winter sports that were in the 2010 Olympics, and the age and gender of each country's participants in those sports, going back to 1924. Similar to data used for summer Olympic graphic http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/sports/olympic-ages/.

  • countryCodes.js
  • sportsIds.js
  • ysg.js - A time series of gender participation, like the data used to create the fever lines at bottom of the summer graphic.
  • json/ - A collection of country-specific age-gender participation files. Includes overall country All_ for default.