Today, we'll explore whether or not being a host country matters or not. Do countries win more medals than usual when they host?
Tomorrow, we'll take a look at what it takes to become a host country. What factors in the most to being selected to hold an Olympiad? (We're not counting bribery)
Wednesday, we'll examine Olympic and election results to determine if U.S. performance at the Olympic games influences the presidential election.
Before I begin today's post, I should make it clear that there is no real "winner" to the Olympics. The IOC makes a point of stating that it is an individual competition between individual athletes- not between countries. However, that doesn't stop them from releasing tables with the medal counts for each country- information for which was very helpful as I researched this topic.
If you look at the earliest few Olympics, it would make sense that being a host country greatly improves your performance level. The first five countries to host- Greece, France, the US, the UK, and Sweden- all won more medals than anyone else when they hosted. (The rankings are sorted by gold medals, however, so Greece and Sweden didn't actually "win" or come in first on the table).
There are reasons for this trend, however. These countries were athletic powerhouses during this time period first, and second, they didn't have to travel as far to compete. Keeping in mind the airplane was invented seven years after the first Olympics (and wasn't exactly ready for mass transportation at that point), travel was a major issue in the first few Olympics. Just look at the nationalities of athletes who competed in the 1904 St. Louis games:
Both the 1900 Paris and 1904 St. Louis Olympic games were notably low-quality, so for some strong evidence we need to move closer to today. However, the Soviet Union and United States dominated the Olympic games for many, many years. In fact, Germany, Canada, Norway, and China are the only countries to be ranked first besides the USSR and the US since the 1940s, and only China accomplished that in the summer games (Incidentally, this happened in the last summer Olympics, when China hosted).
On average, host countries place about fifth in the Olympics. But we can't really draw any conclusions from this, because some countries win all the time (the U.S. has won nearly 1/5 of all gold medals!), and some countries don't happen to do very well. Canada, for example, ranked 27th when it hosted the 1976 summer games with no gold medals- and it wasn't that big of a surprise. They'd ranked 27th in 1972, as well. So rather than look at the overall placement of host countries, let's see how they fared compared to the Olympics before and after.
Since 1960, only two countries- Italy in 2006, and Canada in 1988- have seen their ranking drop from the previous Olympics when hosting. In fact, on average, countries move up nearly three positions on the medal tables when they host. The trend is even more clear when we look at how countries fare after they host the Olympics. Host countries fall nearly five positions on the table in the next Olympics. This is astonishing because many countries have relative positions on the tables; that is, they win about the same amount of gold medals per year. (This average, however, is brought down by Greece, who fell 43 spots in 2008 after hosting in 2004. Yet even without Greece the average is over -3.5)
We can conclude that hosting an Olympic games certainly helps boost your chances of winning medals. Look at Japan, in the 1972 winter games. They won four medals, despite winning none in the 1968 or 1976 winter Olympics. And hosting the 1992 summer Olympics was enough to propel Spain 19 positions up the medal tables to sixth- only to fall seven places in 1996.
This is good news for Brazil- they host the 2016 Summer Olympics, and they may need a little help winning medals in front of the home audience: Brazil finished 22nd in London, winning just three golds.
For a full look at my data, go to this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnZrkjWWJajQdDNUbW5xX1pBN0RGdHVqN19IbDQ2V1E
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