Now that the excitement
brought on by the Rio Olympics has died down, it is time to have a sober second
look on how well Canada’s athletes have done and consider this record in
planning for the Tokyo Olympics in four years.
The 4 gold, 3 silver and 15
bronze medals won by our athletes add up to a total of 22, which puts Canada into
10th place.[i]
This rank has received the bulk of media attention and is remarkably good,
given that 207 teams had been in the competition and 86 of them had won at
least one medal.
One problem with using the
sum of medals as a metric of success in the minds of many is that it counts
equally medals of all colours. For this reason, some prefer ranking on the
basis of gold medals won. By this standard, Canada has achieved a very
respectable rank of 21st.
Another method is used widely
to take account of the fact that medals are of different colour. It assigns 4
points for gold, 2 for silver and 1 for bronze. Canada’s medal count weighted
in this way comes to 37, which puts Canada in an excellent 17th place.
However, these rankings fail
to account of differences in the size of countries that sent teams to Rio.
Canada is in 33rd place on a list of all countries ranked by the
number of medals won for every million of people.
Canada is in 62nd
place according to the count of medals won per billion dollars of national
income, which reflects the availability countries’ financial resources used for
training and selecting athletes.
Team Size and Medals
There is one final and
important metric used for ranking countries. It is based on data shown in the
table below: the weighted number of medals won and the size of the team, which
allows calculation of the percent of team members who have won a medal (the
ratio of team size over the number of medals).
The table shows that 53
percent of the US team members won a medal, which ranks that country in second
place. Of Canada’s team, only 11 percent won a medal and the country ranks 53rd.[ii]
Rank
|
Country
|
Weighted
|
Size of Team
|
Ratio of
|
Medals Won
|
Team Size/Medals
|
|||
2
|
United
States
|
296
|
554
|
53
|
6
|
Jamaica
|
32
|
68
|
47
|
7
|
Great
Britain
|
171
|
366
|
46
|
8
|
North
Korea
|
16
|
35
|
45
|
9
|
Kenya
|
37
|
89
|
41
|
10
|
China
|
166
|
413
|
40
|
35
|
New
Zealand
|
39
|
199
|
19
|
44
|
Australia
|
64
|
421
|
15
|
53
|
Canada
|
37
|
314
|
11
|
The countries shown in the
table were selected for this analysis because their programs for the
preparation and selection of athletes are of interest to Canada’s efforts to
send successful teams to the Olympics.
Relevant for this quest is
the success of the US team. It is due mainly to the competitive sports programs
of its colleges and universities, which train and identify talented athletes
for the Olympics.
The successes of the teams
from North Korea and China are the result of their governments’ sponsorship of
expensive training facilities and coercive methods which have little to teach
democratic countries like Canada.
Of greatest relevance to the
evaluation of Canada’s program is the success of countries like Jamaica and
Kenya, ranked in 6th and 9th place, respectively. Both
countries sent relatively small teams of athletes who competed in a small
number of sports. Jamaicans dominated the sprint events. Kenyans were prominent
in endurance races. Their success appears to be based mainly on their focus on
a limited range of sports in which they competed.
Great Britain’s medal haul
was its largest in 100 years and was based on rich financial support from the National
Lottery arranged by the government.[iii] This
support for the team in Rio was a record level. But the country’s success is
also due to the same policy used by Jamaica and Kenya. A limited number of sports
with past success received most of the financial support. To the dismay of many
in Britain, some very popular sports like basketball ended up without
representation in Rio.
Canada, New Zealand and
Australia have very similar histories, cultures and per capita incomes. New
Zealand’s population is 4.5 million, Australia’s 24 million and Canada’s 36
million. These figures suggest that Canada should have outperformed the other
two countries. In fact, it ranks the lowest in 53rd place while New Zealand and
Australia are in 35th and 44th place, respectively.
The data on the relative
performance of Canada’s athletes in the Rio Olympics suggests that its methods
for preparing and selection them could be improved. One approach for doing so
would encourage more competition among students of the country’s colleges and
universities and participation in US academic leagues.
More financial support from
governments and the public sector would help, but within any level of such
resources, the largest improvement in the success of future Canadian teams in
the Olympics is likely to come from limiting the range of sports that receive
financial support and the attention of trainers.
Canada has engaged in this
policy in the past and it is possible that the low ranking in the Rio Olympics
is the result of the focus on the support of competition in the Winter
Olympics, but an evaluation of this proposition requires more resources than
are available to me.
Political Correctness and the Rio Games
A final note on the Rio
Olympics is that they have not been criticized by activists and politicians
concerned with fairness, gender balance, human rights, climate change and other
efforts to create a better world. There is much to criticize.
· Out of 207 countries 121 won no medals at all.
· Out of 22 medals, 16 were won by Canadian women and
only 6 by men.
· Nearly all of the sprints and foot-races were won by
black men and women.
Some aspects of the Games
would be subject to much political protest if they were found elsewhere.
· The money spent on the Olympics could have been used
to help the needy in the world.
· Canadian athletes competed against athletes from
countries known for the human right violations, creating legitimacy for the
often tyrannical governments of these countries.
· The Games encouraged nationalist sentiments as medals
were awarded while national flags were raised and anthems were played,
undermining efforts to create a peaceful world of cooperation and sharing.
· The games glorified the use of weapons such fire-arms,
bows and arrows, sabres and swords, undermining efforts to use dialogue and compromise
to settle conflicts.
· Horses were confined to small boxes in the holds of
airplanes while on their flights to and from Rio, which led to inhumane
physical and emotional suffering.
· The travel of athletes and officials resulted in huge
emissions of green-house gases, contributing to catastrophic global warming.
Fortunately, activists and
politicians concerned with these conditions stayed away from criticizing the
Rio Olympics on these grounds. Let us hope that they will do so in the
future.
[i] All of the data are found in
the publication “Medals Per Capita: Olympic Glory in Proportion” found at the
website http://www.medalspercapita.com/#medals-by-team-size:2016.
[ii] This calculation disregards the fact that some
athletes won more than one medal. It also disregards the fact that all members
of a medal winning team receive a medal.
The metric includes only the medal won by the team.
[iii] The analysis of the success
of Great Britain’s athletes in Rio draws on:
Ahmed, Murad, Joe
Leahy and Samantha Pearson (2016), “Rio
Olympics 2016: Britain emerges as sporting superpower”, Financial Times, August 22, found at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e91184a4-67fa-11e6-a0b1-d87a9fea034f.html and
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