Olympic Medal Prediction

2016 RIO

The 2016 Olympics fever has currently gripped the whole world with participation from 200 countries and close to 11000 athletes. From India a record 117 athletes are presently slogging it out in Brazil, needless to say everyone from politicians to Bollywood stars is seen supporting the athletes. Even in terms of performance it is widely expected that the Indian contingent would definitely outperform its achievements from the 2012 London Olympics.

The following paper tries to predict the number of medals some of the major nations would be winning, with the additional inclusion of India into the list for the purpose of analyses.

To start with it was important to see how different countries have performed in previous Olympics. I’ve looked at medal tally data from the past 5 Olympics, going back to 1996 Atlanta Olympics. As a starting point from this data effort was made to analyse the trend.

For securing in-depth analysis more complex but related variables were taken into considerations:

1. Economic freedom rankings – published every year by Heritage foundation, this ranking takes into account several factors in a country such as government policies, businesses, trade and conveys stability, economic freedom enjoyed by citizens and degree of innovation in a country.

Figure 1 shows the economic freedom rankings of selected countries in the form of a color coded world map - (Map based on Longitude (generated) and Latitude (generated). Color shows sum of EF Rank. Details are shown for Country Name)

2. Population – It is obviously important to consider the population of a country, though as we may guess it will not be the most important factor in predicting the medal tally for 2016 Olympics. Population between 1996 and 2015 was examined with figures taken from United nation’s population division.

3. Gross Domestic Product – GDP between 1996 and 2015 was also analysed and after conducting in-depth analysis was given the highest weightage. The correlation between GDP and total medal tally of a country was the best among all the variables used with a R square of 0.74 and P value (significance) of < 0.0001

4. GDP per capita was also analysed but due to complexity was not completely included

Figure 2 below predicts the total medal count of some of the major countries for the 2016 Rio Olympics and showcases the results in a bar chart form, including the gold, silver and bronze count.

Additional considerations included the low athlete count from the Russian contingent due to the current doping scandal and the host nation factor for Brazil, which also included past Olympic performances by U.K and China.

Figure 3 above showcases the past performances of all the major countries in a stacked up bar chart color coded by previous Olympics with the predicted 2016 Olympic medal tally on top as a line.

As far as India is concerned it could be hoped that its athletes would bring in close to 10 medals

(9 to be exact as per the derived information with 1 gold, 2 silver and 6 bronze). Anything less than that would definitely disappoint the people and most certainly would not help the cause of the government, which of late is trying too hard to showcase the country as a budding global power.