A Visual History of Which Countries Have Dominated the Summer Olympics | Hacker News Reader

A Visual History of Which Countries Have Dominated the Summer Olympics

nytimes.com

60 pointsprawn56 comments

Typical example of poor graphics at work. You only have data once every 4 years yet they draw curves between each dot as if there was actual data in between. This is extremely misleading.

Plus, I don't understand the necessity to put "Nazi Germany" after 1933. Based on all facts it was still a single, unified country at the time, no matter who was ruling it.

The "Other countries in Europe" represent a huge chunk of medals and should be separated at least by major countries, leaving only smaller amounts unseparated.

Regarding "Nazi Germany", it's complicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Reich#Divided_Germany

The Third Reich was legally the continuation of the Weimar Republic (both of which are just colloquial names, not formal identities of Germany at the time). Neither part of post-WW2 Germany was a full successor to the Third Reich until the Reunification (in which the Allies effectively ceded most of their control to what was formerly West Germany and East Germany ceased to exist).

I'm not really sure under what basis "Nazi Germany" can be considered a separate legal entity from the pre-existing Weimar Republic without also considering the Weimar Republic a separate legal entity from the pre-existing German Empire of 1871.

You can think it the other way around. There's going to be some continuity as many athletes compete in many olympics during their career, even if it's "sampled" every four years. Also most often some sports scenes and countries experience cycles. I find it a lot easier to see those kind of things from continuous curves. Even if it's not so exact.

The graphs are really bad. The problem I have is not the continuity, which as you say can help to identify trends, but the huge gap between two real data points. It should be clear what is real data and what is not (for example, using a linespoints graph), it really looks like there were medals won in non-onlympic years. The author focused too much on making beautiful graphs instead of just presenting the data.

And maybe it's just me but I think colored lines would be clearer than those colored surfaces which seem to originate at 0 after the gapss.

But when the big variations are caused by things like boycotts and the fact that games simply didn't take place, then this continuity argument doesn't really make sense. US Sports didn't slowly collapse from 1976 to 1980 then gradually recover through to 1984.

Certainly feels like interesting stories about the changing fortunes of eastern european countries, and the fate of former soviet republics get subsumed into a blob which otherwise makes it just look like Europe mysteriously got much stronger from 1988 to 2000.

Medal count in absolute figures says little about which country does well in producing athletes, and a lot about the size of the population. One would think that the US, Russia or China are good at producing great athletes when looking at these figures, but reality is that all three countries do a rather mediocre job when taking into consideration the size of their populations. This is a better measure: http://www.medalspercapita.com/#weighted-per-capita:2012

It reveals that you are more likely to become an olympic medalist if you are from the Caribbean, Scandinavia, certain Eastern European countries, Australia and New Zealand, than if you are Chinese, American or Russian.

And please notice that the figures hold true for several Summer Olympics. The US, China and Russia don't dominate at all.

Also the medal count per GDP is interesting.

> It reveals that you are more likely to become an olympic medalist if you are from the Caribbean, Scandinavia, certain Eastern European countries, Australia and New Zealand, than if you are Chinese, American or Russian.

The Olympics is actually set up to favor smaller countries by nature of having a cap on how many people from one country can compete in an event. There are probably many athletes from US/China/Russia that would compete were they from other countries.

They only send the best. The best tend to win the medals.

Sure. But is that the same as "producing great athletes"? Many of the Caribbean nations also have populations that are ~100x smaller than the US, Russia, or China. Russia would need to win 430 medals (nearly half of the total medal count) just to compete with the Bahamas winning 1 medal based on this metric.

Caribbean countries tend to do very well in track and field sports, but they don't send many athletes to compete in other sports. So it might be more informative to see the number of olympic qualifiers for each country (not just medal count) per capita. But I'm not sure that would be much better at determining which country produces the best athletes.

There's so many confounding factors in the data that it's difficult to draw any real conclusions. I still find these kinds of statistics interesting though.

Polo and Water Polo?

Isn't Polo the sport where you have horses running around on a huge field, and Water Polo the one with humans swimming around a pool?

I don't think Polo is at the Olympics, but I might be wrong.

It mentions the plunge for distance. I'd love to see tug-of-war reinstated.

It was from 1900 - 1936:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polo_at_the_Summer_Olympics

Looked up a fun fact yesterday: Michael Phelps has won more medals than India in the last 3 Olympics and is on pace to do it again. Being a fan of underdogs, I started following and cheering the Indian team and it's been a lot of fun.

He's also won more gold medals than Canada in the past 3-4 summer olympics.

India does lousy at the olympics in general and Canada does lousy at the summer olympics.

I can'tspeak for other canadians, but I don't give 2 shits about the summer olympics.

Doesn't India do lousy at every sport expect cricket and field hockey? I'm always amazed at how china and india can't find 11 decent soccer players.

Australia is by far the smallest country (23M) to make-the-grade in recent times, and its almost entirely because of efforts in or on water.

...And it puts in a disportionately huge amount of money into it (citation needed)

Rather than other countries that spend money on stuff like science and things.

Yes I wish Australia put the effort into science that we do into sport.

who are these countries that make big investments in science and not in sport? pretty sure politicians everywhere love funding big spectacles over backroom things like research

Funding elite sport is funding science to an extent.

That is quite a stretch.

A stretch yes, but there is research going on at the AIS, try to eek out that half a percent performance boost.

What makes third world countries poor performers at the olympics?

It's the other way around. Rich countries have more money to fund people to train, so they have more people training and thus perform better.

It's kind of funny that US Olympic success is largely funded by people sitting on couches.

Many reasons but one is money for equipment. Things like running and boxing have very low barrier of entry. While a healthy human can run anywhere for free (I guess preferably with some decent shoes) you need a modern very expensive bicycle to compete in that sport just as an example. Also a large middle class that has working parents who can support and spend money on a child to train and learn is a big part. Many poorer nations children young/adults need to be working and not training for the Olympics. Overall it's disposable income and disposable time being the crucial factor.

there is also the factor of whether a sport is at the olympics. I believe wrestling is a big sport in west africa. and polo-ish games are pretty big in central asia. these don't appear at the olympics because the ioc is mostly controlled by westerners.

Wrestling's removal as a 'core' Olympic sport was pushed by the Chinese, who wanted to get wushu in.

And such meta-sport competition could be addressed easily and effectively by bringing back pankration under the aegis of IMMAF. Any martial art not contested separately as a pure discipline could enter competitors in the mixed discipline tournament.

Wrestling, boxing, taekwondo, and judo are all martial arts officially contested during the 2016 international games. Additionally, Budo (Japanese) was exhibited in 1964, Glima (Viking) in 1912, and Savate (French) in 1924.

Demonstration sports were suspended after 1992, so Wushu (Chinese) was not exhibited at the Beijing games. Instead, a Wushu tournament ran concurrently with the international games, in Beijing, with permission from the international committee. Looked like a duck; quacked like a duck.

Sports with a compliant international governing body now get to be in a differently-branded international games every 4 years rather than a one-time demonstration sport just when it is popular in the current host country. Sports can be "promoted" from the "next year" games to the main event. Ju-jutsu, Sumo, Muay Thai, Kickboxing, and Karate will be contested in 2017. I am not familiar with any reason why the International Wushu body chooses not to organize events at the other games.

But wrestling is not removed. Wrestling is in for 2020, as is Karate--receiving one of the aforementioned promotions.

One factor that has not been noted by others is that a common route for mid-tier athletes who actually reside in some of the bigger countries to get to the Olympics is to have parents from a small country. As long as you make the qualification limit for the sport and can find a hook to compete for some other country then you get in. You will most likely perform at the same mid-tier level you did before the Olympics, but you get to hang out in the village and have a fun week or two. When you see some athlete competing for a country that you might have a hard time finding on a map just do a quick check to see which US or European university that athlete attends and competes at -- performance that is good enough to make a university squad is often sufficient to get past the qualification bar at the Olympics.

Is there a name for this type of graph?

Yes, a streamgraph. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streamgraph

lol the USA is #1 at Soccer

"Britain". You mean "Great Britain".

We might not be so great anymore, but it is the correct name.

Only Britain is great.

https://goo.gl/images/W6fmhd

Isn’t it also “Great Britain & Northern Ireland” as far as the Olympics goes?

I believe the Olympic team is called Great Britain and our Northern Irish cousins can elect to represent either that team or the Ireland team.

Why not "United Kingdom"? Do Scotland, N. Ireland, and/or Wales compete separately at the Olympics?

No, it's one of the few sporting occasions where they actually compete together.

> "Britain". You mean "Great Britain".

Well, its not like this is a case where anyone is going to make the mistake of thinking the intended reference was to Lesser Britain rather than Great Britain.

other countries in North America ^_^

All those nyt articles are now behind a paywall for me. the web link does not work anymore. is it policy to allow paywalled links?

TIL there was a (kind of) Olympic Games in 1906.

"Other countries in North America"

Really? There are only TWO countries in that category, a category that is significantly larger than some of the other listed countries (Japan, Finland). Even West and Nazi Germanys get mentions. See you all at the winters. It isn't a Lincoln penny that they bury at center ice each year.

I thought it was a little bizarre that Nazi Germany was broken out differently like that - especially since it is a single datapoint, 1936. It's not like it was, in 1936, any different with respect to its borders, than 1932 Germany. And if shifts in government are significant to warrant a new label, than why not break France into the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Republics?

Infographic makers are story tellers, and that's a pretty dramatic piece of that chart.

Yes. A lot of people on here are being too literal. If one just wants the facts associated with something as historically convoluted as this, you probably want a numerical table with lots of footnotes.

Really... So where would you put Cuba, Mexico or Haiti? There's at least 20 North American countries. How many of those that are participating in the Olympics is of cause a different story.

As a non-American: honest question, is Nicaragua part of North or South America? Where is the line generally drawn?

I was always under the impression that "North America" only encompasses the big three but the Caribbeans and Central America (i.e. everything on the land bridge below Mexico up to and including Nicaragua) are not considered part of either of the two "Americas".

I'm not American either, but I think regardless of nationality the geography is pretty clearly defines.

The Wikipedia article seems to be consistent with what I learned in school, and it puts Nicaragua in North America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America

I think the issue is that many have been taught to view America as three parts: North, South and Central. Central America however isn't actually a continent.

There are at least four continents: Afro-Eurasia, America, Antarctica and Oceania. Everything beyond that is mostly culture and politics.

You seem to be correct about Central being part of the northern continent though: the dividing line seems to be the Panama Canal, placing all of Central America in North America.

The real question seems to be why Panama isn't then considered to be on both continents, considering the Canal would put a good chunk of it in South America. The answer as far as I can tell is just as I thought: politics.

EDIT: Also the Caribbeans are apparently considered part of North America although Grenada is closer to Trinidad than anything beyond Puerto Rico is to the North American mainland. Fun.

EDIT2: Okay, I give up. Can't we all just agree that the concept of a "continent" doesn't make sense? What continent do the Diomede islands belong to? What about Savoonga? What if Savoonga was Russian rather than part of Alaska?

Central America is that part of North America on the continental land mass between Colombia and Mexico. This is convenient for [U.S.] Americans that don't care to learn the names or relative positions of those countries.

I consider the Lucayans, Greater Antilles, and Lesser Antilles to be North American, down to Grenada. Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, and Curacao are South American. Looking at a map that shows seafloor depth makes this distinction easier, as the latter are clearly on South America's continental shelf. This makes "the Caribbean" that part of North America on the island archipelago. Again, this is convenient for [U.S.] Americans who don't know any of those states and territories other than Puerto Rico--even the other U.S. possessions.

Contrary to Wikipedia, "Middle America" is the Great Plains, Near South, and Midwest regions of the U.S., specifically the white, Protestant Christian, middle-class, suburban communities therein. "Mesoamerica" is the northern part of Central America and the southern part of Mexico.

We don't talk about Bermuda or Greenland.

I think the graphs are considering your definition, with many countries in the North America.

In school sometimes it's taught that "America" has three divisions: north (3 countries), south and central America. Caribbean, for example, lies in a different tectonic plate, wouldn't be north America.

Mexico - North America, one of the "other two" I mentioned.

Cuba - Island nation. Not on the continent. By region, Central America. Not all countries are on continents.

Haiti, also not on the continent. If by region, Central America.

I ask: Is New Zealand part of the Australian continent? Or is it in the region of Oceania?

North America (excluding territories):

  Antigua and Barbuda
  The Bahamas
  Barbados
  Belize
  Canada
  Costa Rica
  Cuba
  Dominica
  Dominican Republic
  El Salvador
  Grenada
  Guatemala
  Haiti
  Honduras
  Jamaica
  Mexico
  Nicaragua
  Panama
  Saint Kitts
  Saint Lucia
  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
  Trinidad and Tobago
  Turks and Caicos
  United States

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