The Paris games this summer were a captivating event.  Having so many fans in the stands at some truly fabulous venues certainly made them a games to remember.  Just like I did three years with the Tokyo games I decided to dig a little deeper into the medal counts and see if I could find some interesting stories within the data.  And just like last time, I reached for my favourite analytics tool, IBM Cognos Analytics, to help me out.  Having all the modelling and visualization tools I could ask for together in a single web-based UI made it really easy to ensconce myself in the data.

Overall Standings

Here are the Paris and Tokyo standings compared.  France and South Korea both jumped up the standings.  Of course its normal for the host country to have a big medal boost.  Otherwise there weren't big changes from 2021.

Medal Efficiency

The athletes flotilla in the opening ceremonies was a completely unique way to introduce each country's athletes to the world.  It also made it obvious how large some contingents were, and that the largest contingents weren't always from the most populous countries.  That got me thinking about ways to measure medal efficiency.  By basing efficiency on the number of athletes sent to the games, as well as each country's total population and their GDP per capita, we can get a measure of how efficiently they are using their available resources to win medals.

For example: The US sent more athletes to Paris than any other country.  They are also the 3rd most populous country in the world and one of the richest.  Does their overall medal haul reflect that?  Looking resources required per medal won (which means that lower values are better) we see that the US is actually among the best.  But look at Kyrgyzstan, roughly twice as efficient as the US when it came to winning their 6 medals!

Looking at the least efficient countries. we do see that India is far and away the least efficient, but actually that's largely because of their huge population.  In terms of GDP per-capita, they actually rank as one of the most efficient medal-winning countries in the world!

Medals by Gender

When we segment medal standings by gender, we can see that in many countries there are dramatic differences in the number of women's medals versus the number of men's medals.  For example, it seems that in the case of the host nation, France, their medal count was dominated by male athletes.  Compare that to the two medal powerhouses, China and the US, who rely largely on their female athletes for their impressive medal hauls.

Let's look at this data a little differently, by comparing the percentage of each country's total medals that went to women with their overall medal count.  In this Marimekko chart, the bar height is the percentage medals one by women and the width is the total medals won.  80% of Poland's medals were won by female athletes.  As we pick out some of the names towards the left of the chart, are we seeing perhaps more wealthy countries compared to the right? 

Socio-Economic Drivers

If there's any truth to my conjecture that wealthier nations are winning more medals in women's sports, there must be data to demonstrate that.  I grabbed 4 different socio-economic indicators, and compared the averages between countries where half or more of their medals were in women's sports, vs. those where less than half were from women's sports. 

There are some major differences as you can see.  Wealth clearly makes a big differences with a very large discrepancy in average GDP.   Life expectancy was also significantly higher for countries that are more successful in women's sports.  But most startling is the gap in average house disposable income, a factor of over two-and-a-half times higher compared to countries where most medals are from men!

Conclusion

The significant advances made my women's sports over the past several years has been extremely encouraging.  But clearly we still haven't met true gender parity in at the games, as women's sports are largely the domain of the richest nations.  Thanks to IBM Cognos Analytics for making all of this possible by offering simple tools for an everyday user like myself.  Looking forward to the Los Angeles games and another data journey!