Data was wrangled using Formula Bot. Graphic produced in RStudio with touch-ups in Canva.
We excluded discontinued sports (e.g., tug-of-war) and sports with less than 5 total appearances at the Olympics (e.g., climbing) in our analyses. Moreover, sports officially categorized as disciplines of a broader sport were condensed into the parent sport (e.g., sprint canoeing and slalom canoeing are both represented under “Canoeing”) with the exception of the aquatics and volleyball disciplines, which we believed warranted individual representation due to popularity. Write-up of some our thoughts [here](https://formulabot.com/blog/olympic-wealth-gdp-country-sport-dominance-correlation).
Hide-and-Seek is an exhibition sport this year. The US doesn’t have a team… I heard good players are too hard to find.
You are missing several sports.
So happy to handball on the chart – which is very easy to read, so props for elegant data. Handball is an under-rated sport in terms of entertainment imo. The French don’t dominate by the way. Denmark has as many medals – and if Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro get to add theirs and combine them with the Yugoslav medals, I think we could say Yugoslavia is first. Really the Russian/Soviet & German teams have a bit of a claim as well… I guess the point is no country is “dominant.” It seems likely that this is also the case for Boxing, Rowing, Volleyball, Wrestling and Weightlifting… (though don’t know them well enough to speak to this authoritatively).
Could the word dominance be replaced by something more accurate? Otherwise this elegant data becomes more like false, click-bait propaganda. Apologies if the goal is to monetize anger; but if the goal is to get closer to a shared understanding of a world we need to co-exist in, then that’s something to think about.
Would be cool to see winter olympic sports as well
Has USA basketball won a medal in every Olympics? I imagine 33% is the upper bound since each country would only get one team
Edit: I think maybe there’s the same upper bound for Brazil in beach volleyball. 31% is very impressive
Edit 2: now I’m questioning how table tennis and badminton can be above 33% too. Shouldn’t each country only get one team in those too? Unless maybe there are singles? Idk that much about Olympics if I’m perfectly honest lol
Looks like the Russians have synchronized swimming on lockdown. They’re the only country to have won the gold?
I always thought Brazil had more gold than silver in beach volleyball.
It should specify summer olympics. Otherwise, we’d see a lot more Canadian flags on there.
How do we have the most guns and still only win 14% of the shooting competitions?
Wtf is athletics as a category?
I find it funny that US has most medals in shooting, I mean, of course, they have extensive training :)))
Damn, Russia and Synchronized Swimming.
Gold or nothing.
Shooting is our national sport
It would be kind of embarassing if Korea wasn’t tops in Tae Kwon Do.
15 comments
Data source: [Kaggle](https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/krishd123/olympics-legacy-1896-2020)
Data was wrangled using Formula Bot. Graphic produced in RStudio with touch-ups in Canva.
We excluded discontinued sports (e.g., tug-of-war) and sports with less than 5 total appearances at the Olympics (e.g., climbing) in our analyses. Moreover, sports officially categorized as disciplines of a broader sport were condensed into the parent sport (e.g., sprint canoeing and slalom canoeing are both represented under “Canoeing”) with the exception of the aquatics and volleyball disciplines, which we believed warranted individual representation due to popularity. Write-up of some our thoughts [here](https://formulabot.com/blog/olympic-wealth-gdp-country-sport-dominance-correlation).
Hide-and-Seek is an exhibition sport this year. The US doesn’t have a team… I heard good players are too hard to find.
You are missing several sports.
So happy to handball on the chart – which is very easy to read, so props for elegant data. Handball is an under-rated sport in terms of entertainment imo. The French don’t dominate by the way. Denmark has as many medals – and if Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro get to add theirs and combine them with the Yugoslav medals, I think we could say Yugoslavia is first. Really the Russian/Soviet & German teams have a bit of a claim as well… I guess the point is no country is “dominant.” It seems likely that this is also the case for Boxing, Rowing, Volleyball, Wrestling and Weightlifting… (though don’t know them well enough to speak to this authoritatively).
Could the word dominance be replaced by something more accurate? Otherwise this elegant data becomes more like false, click-bait propaganda. Apologies if the goal is to monetize anger; but if the goal is to get closer to a shared understanding of a world we need to co-exist in, then that’s something to think about.
Would be cool to see winter olympic sports as well
Has USA basketball won a medal in every Olympics? I imagine 33% is the upper bound since each country would only get one team
Edit: I think maybe there’s the same upper bound for Brazil in beach volleyball. 31% is very impressive
Edit 2: now I’m questioning how table tennis and badminton can be above 33% too. Shouldn’t each country only get one team in those too? Unless maybe there are singles? Idk that much about Olympics if I’m perfectly honest lol
Looks like the Russians have synchronized swimming on lockdown. They’re the only country to have won the gold?
I always thought Brazil had more gold than silver in beach volleyball.
It should specify summer olympics. Otherwise, we’d see a lot more Canadian flags on there.
How do we have the most guns and still only win 14% of the shooting competitions?
Wtf is athletics as a category?
I find it funny that US has most medals in shooting, I mean, of course, they have extensive training :)))
Damn, Russia and Synchronized Swimming.
Gold or nothing.
Shooting is our national sport
It would be kind of embarassing if Korea wasn’t tops in Tae Kwon Do.