For Athletics geeks:Irelands performane in Olympic and World Per Capita standings

Pisco Sour

Medals tables dont tell the full story due to the different populations of each country, so I've decided to compare the number of medals Ireland has won in the Olympic Games and World Championships to the number of medals won by other Western European countries.

The reason I have chosen Western European Countries only is because:

1) Economically they are all close to us in terms of GDP per Capita, making a comparison much fairer than a comparison with countries who do not have money to invest in sport.

2) A comparison with Eastern European Countries would be unfair as the majority of these countries had state sponsored doping programmes in place.

3) Western European countries are our closest neighbours making a comparison with them the most natural.

Bear in mind that these comparisons are for the number of medals won only, and does not weight Gold, Silver and Bronze differently.

I have taken the current population of each country to the nearest 100,000. For any small countries I have taken the current population to the nearest 10,000.

For Ireland and the GB populations I have split Northern Ireland's population in a ratio of 2:1 in favour of GB

For the Olympics Listing, after calculating the per capita number of medals won, I have adjusted this to account for the amount of Olympics each country has competed in. This is necessary as many countries have boycotted Olympic Games down the years and some countries didnt exist in the early days of the Olympic Games, such as Ireland for example, who didnt compete as an independant nation until 1924.

For the World Championship listing I didnt readjust as above, as the championships only started in 1983 and as far as I'm aware hasnt had any boycotts.

This listing places Ireland 8th of 24 Western European Countries in terms of Olympic medals won per capita, and in 9th place in terms of World Championship medals won per capita.

The reason I have done this list is to show the rather ignorant people who constantly moan about our performances in Olympic and World Championships and keep going on about how dreadful we are. It gets very annoying to have to listen to these people and this analysis shows that we have performed very well indeed.

Man_bear_pig

I'm not sure if this is the best way of analysing our achievements. You have to look at a few more factors and not just population and number of olympics and championships attended. Although your analysis does give a good brief overview of everything, you would probably find ireland slipping down the ladder if you studied it fully.

Firstly we have to look at the time period in which the medals were won. In the Olympics we won half of our medals in 1928 and 1932. You would have to take into account the number of competitors, number of countries and so on here. It then took 6 more olympics to win another medal, then 7 olympics for another one and then another 4 olympics.

The reason people are moaning about our performances in the olympics and world championships is because we are not consistent. People don't care about medals that were won 50, 60 or 70 years ago. If you look at other countries such as Finland and Great Britain, they have been consistently winning medals in every championship. People look at the present and the near future when they moan about our performances. We forget how well we have done in the past and concentrate on where the next medal is coming from.

Pisco Sour

Man_bear_pig wrote: »

I'm not sure if this is the best way of analysing our achievements. You have to look at a few more factors and not just population and number of olympics and championships attended. Although your analysis does give a good brief overview of everything, you would probably find ireland slipping down the ladder if you studied it fully.

Firstly we have to look at the time period in which the medals were won. In the Olympics we won half of our medals in 1928 and 1932. You would have to take into account the number of competitors, number of countries and so on here. It then took 6 more olympics to win another medal, then 7 olympics for another one and then another 4 olympics.

The reason people are moaning about our performances in the olympics and world championships is because we are not consistent. People don't care about medals that were won 50, 60 or 70 years ago. If you look at other countries such as Finland and Great Britain, they have been consistently winning medals in every championship. People look at the present and the near future when they moan about our performances. We forget how well we have done in the past and concentrate on where the next medal is coming from.

Well a minor correction, after 1932, we didnt compete in 1936, then there was WW2, so it was just 1948 and 1952 that we failed to win a medal before Delaney claimed our 4th medal.

If you look at Finland, the majority of their medals came before WW2. I expect that most Western European Countries would have a similar slowdown in medals won as time has gone on and the Olympics have got bigger, so I think the comparison is still pretty fair.

plodder

Interesting exercise. Are we talking Winter and Summer Olympics here? Probably the figures for Summer olympics only would be more interesting for us.

Also, West Germany looks like it's been given the population for all of Germany.

I agree also with the comment that it's more interesting to consider recent achivements exclusively (say the last 30-40 years)

Pisco Sour

Well this is just for Athletics in the Olympics so the Winter Olympics are excluded as are the other summer olympic sports.

West Germany only had a team for 4 or 5 Olympic Games. For the rest they were either Unified German Team, or Germany, so I thought it would be easier just to include the full German population rather than get into complicated mathematics.

Pisco Sour

For the following countries medals were won in the following years:

Ireland: 1928, 1932, 1932, 1956, 1984, 2000

Belgium: 1948, 1948, 1960, 1964, 1972, 1972, 1976, 1976, 1976, 2008, 2008

Switzerland: 1924, 1924, 1936, 1948, 1948, 1952, 1984, 1988

Austria: 1948, 1948, 1968, 1968, 1972, 1996, 2000

Netherlands: 1924, 1928, 1936, 1936, 1948, 1948, 1948, 1948, 1948, 1948, 1952, 1968, 1980, 1984, 1992

Finland: Of their 113 medals, only 31 have been won post WW2.

GB&NI: 80 of their 188 medals came before WW2.

So its unfair to pin point Ireland as a country who has not performed well in modern times, when it is quite clear that many other Western European countries have had very similar fall-offs in medals won in more recent times.