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> ASIA-PACIFIC OLYMPIANS RANK WELL ON MACROECONOMIC MODEL
>
> By Charles E. Morrison, East-West Center President
>
> HONOLULU (Aug. 27) -- It may seem strange that the giant accounting firm,
> PricewaterhouseCoopers, has developed a model based on macroeconomic and
> historical data to forecast the number of medals that countries may win at
> the Olympic games. Since they had predicted the United States to win only
> 70 medals, their model obviously needs quite a bit of tweaking. More
> impressive is another macroeconomic model by two American economists,
> Andrew Bernard of Dartmouth College and Meghan Busse of the University of
> California. They accurately predicted the United States would win 97
> medals at the Sydney Olympics, and they forecast 93 medals for the 2004
> Olympics.
>
> While we ooh and aah over the individual and team exploits we see on our
> television screens, these models take no account of the skill of
> individual athletes. They are based on the simple fact that in world
> sports, population size and level of economic development matter. A
> populous country has more young people to draw from, and a rich country
> draws deeper in its population and has better resources for training.
>
> The models also look at other factors -- home country advantage and past
> performance in Olympic games. Australia did especially well in the Sydney
> Olympics, and in Athens, the Greeks had won, as of Thursday (Sept. 26), 17
> times as many gold medals per person as did the United States. Past
> performance is a measure of the factors that are not quantifiable, such as
> the degree of "sports-mindedness" in a society and the extent to which
> sports efforts are focused on the Olympic games.
>
> Because of its sheer size and economic resources, the United States is a
> sports superpower. Americans can rightly be proud of their athletes'
> performances. But despite the U.S. dominance in the total medal count,
> many other countries can also be very proud because their medal counts
> exceed normal expectations or they may be exceptionally competitive in one
> or two sports.
>
> In the Asia-Pacific region, Australia and New Zealand are super
> performers. With only 7 percent of the U.S. population, Australia had
> about half as many medals. Australia's Bureau of Statistics had proudly
> been issuing a day-to-day count of gold medals per capita. At the end of
> day 13, this ranked the Bahamas first, Australia second, New Zealand
> third, and Greece fourth. (The United States placed 35th). Australia's
> consistent ability to punch above its weight in recent Olympics can be
> attributed to a national enthusiasm for sports backed up by money,
> including large government outlays for training, coaching and technology.
> The Medical Journal of Australia is something of a party pooper, asking
> whether Australia's $4.8 million spent per gold medal might help the
> national health more if spent on doctors, nurses and hospitals.
>
> China's rise of prominence in the Olympics is also a matter of great
> national pride. Because of its huge population, its per capita medal count
> is below average, considerably lower than the U.S. count. But China is
> still a developing country. As it continues to grow richer, it is an
> emerging Olympics superpower, destined to come into contention with the
> United States for total medal count. South Korea and Japan also have much
> to boast about, having both come in slightly ahead of the United States on
> the gold medals per capita basis.
>
> By all measures, India does least well in the Olympics, with only three
> individual medals in the modern Olympics and a few more in the past in
> field hockey. The PricewaterhouseCoopers model predicted India would win
> 10 medals this year, but through day 13, they had only won one silver
> medal for shooting. On the list of medals per capita, India stands
> stolidly in last place, 1 per billion compared to 1 per 35 million for
> second-to-the-last Mexico -- so far down to be literally off the charts.
> Indian sport writer, Rohit Brijnath, writes: "This makes little sense to
> the world...we haven't figured it out either."
>
> As he and other Indian writers observe, India's low per capita income and
> poor access to sport facilities and training are not full explanations,
> since some very poor, under-equipped and much smaller African and
> Caribbean countries have done well in the Olympics. A more likely
> explanation lies in the opposite of the Australian phenomenon: an educated
> society in India that is so focused on academic and vocational education
> that parents simply are not encouraging their children to excel in sports.
>
> Even in India there is hope for the future. One Indian writer notes
> encouragingly that it took only four years between the second and third
> medal, whereas it had been decades between the first and second.
>
> So no matter whether the national team is doing poorly or well, all people
> cheer their athletes and hope they will do better in the future. Even the
> smallest countries typically have at least one national hero, and everyone
> appreciates a stellar athletic performance, no matter the athlete's
> nationality. While more needs to be done to achieve equality of
> opportunity in sports, the Olympics have been remarkably successful in
> becoming a true venue for peaceful global competition.
>
> Charles E. Morrison can be reached at (808) 944-7103 or
> morrisoc@eastwestcenter.org.
>
>
>
>
