Climatic origin is unrelated to national Olympic success and specialization: an analysis of six successive games (1996–2016) using 12 dissimilar sports categories

Abstract

Disparities among nations in the summer Olympics are often ascribed to long-lasting climatic influences. In this study, we examined six Summer Games (1996–2016) to investigate the potential correlation between climatic origin and national Olympic success in 12 dissimilar sports categories. We measured total success by medal tallies (MT) and the revealed symmetric comparative advantage (CA). Using Tobit regression, we tested the effect of four generic climates (Dry–Arid, Tropical–Equatorial, Warm–Humid, Cool–Humid) against the covariation of population, gross domestic product and the socialist system. The Tobit models were significant both for MT (ρ² = 0.20–0.73) and CA (ρ² = 0.08–0.54). With a few minor exceptions (Weights, Aquatics/Water, Combat) much of the variation in MT and CA was explained by the three covariates. Inter-nation disparities in Olympic performance are unrelated to climatic origin. The previously observed ‘advantage’ of the Temperate climate is discussed considering the strong ‘socialist’ covariate.

Keywords:

• Medals
• advantage
• sports
• climate
• population
• GDP
• socialist effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The KGT system assigns a country into one of the four generic climates according to its dominant climate, i.e. the climate of the part of the country in which most of the population resides (Potts and Edwards 2013), which usually includes the capital city as the main population center (Hoffmann et al. 2004). However, large temperate climate countries like Russia, USA and China also exhibit to a lesser degree the dry–arid climate. Realistically, this inconsistency is not expected to have some substantial impact on our results. For instance, as far as sports development and Olympic talents preparation, the common practice is for the national Olympic teams to train and prepare both their potential talents as well as their established athletes in large cities, usually the capital city; simply put, secondary climates do not play a role in this respect.

2. Research claims that host nations receive some extra ‘support’ in sports with judges, like team sports, boxing and gymnastics (e.g. Balmer, Nevill, and Williams 2003). However, no study has ever provided empirical evidence on this issue (i.e. to quantify the exact effects in all judge-dependent Olympic sports). Such a methodological task is undeniably a difficult one, and, that’s probably why many studies do not incorporate this factor in their models (e.g. Morton 2002; Moosa and Smith 2004; Tcha and Pershin 2003) while other studies provide evidence of its insignificant role in explaining national Olympic performance variation (e.g. Rathke and Woitek 2008). Nonetheless, given the aggregation of the six summer Olympics in the present study, we do not expect a substantial bias due to omitting host/ex-host. Except for Greece (as far as population), the host countries in these six consecutive Games (USA, Australia, Greece, China, Great Brittan, Brazil) were populous and possessed a rather strong economy long before and after the Games.

3. One controversial issue when interpreting national Olympic success is the widely ‘hypothesized’ over-achievement of the socialist nations (i.e. Eastern bloc countries) due to excessive doping practices. As in prior studies on Olympic success, we did not intent nor we attempted to collect data on this controversial and highly complicated issue for obvious reasons. The fact is that, up to now no study has ever made it possible to provide solid statistical evidence on the extent to which ex-Eastern bloc countries continue to exercise doping practices more than other countries do (e.g. USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, etc.). Undeniably, ‘although still controversial, the phenomenon of overuse of illegal drugs in the Eastern bloc countries was intense at least until the end of 1980s, when a stricter antidoping regime was introduced worldwide’ (Tcha 2004). That being the case several decades ago, there is no evidence, whatsoever, that this doping-dependent ‘superiority’ of the ex-Eastern bloc countries holds for the six Olympics under study (1996–2016). Further, our feeling is that at least for the last two decades the use of illegal drugs is so spread that its differential effect on national Olympic performance is hard to assess. For instance, data revisions regarding doping-related forfeitures ‘are predictable by using the same determinants that explain medal success, indicating that either the sporting success of different nations is influenced by the same determinants as doping or different national sport systems organize doping in a comparable way’ (Emrich, Gassmann, and Pierdzioch 2017). Hence, until solid empirical evidence clarifies this issue, we can only accept that ‘certain political systems, for example single party or communist, may have a different approach to participation, training and incentives for success, so may show different results’ (Johnson and Ali 2004).