complying with up from part 1 where I covered some general elements of the Tokyo Olympics, it is time now to have a look at the medal table, go over performances of NOCs, look at patterns and curiosities and broaden the conversations about sporting systems. Of course, comparing the medal table to previous Olympics will have to take into account the new sports and therefore, lots of NOCs won a lot more just because they had a lot more possibilities to win more. getting into the top 10 in the medal table needs always winning a lot more than 20 medals in overall with a variety of 7-10 Gold. finest possibilities come from multi-medal sports where even a single athlete can win sufficient gold to location a country in the top 10 (Emma McKeon and Kaylee McKeown for Australia contributed with 7 Golds and 4 Bronze medals in Swimming to Australia’s success in Tokyo).
The USA regained the very first location in spite of winning less medals than the Rio 2016 edition, but thanks to one a lot more gold medal than China, succeeded in retaining 1st place. team USA won medals in 25 sports with a lot of medals coming from the normal Swimming and Athletics programmes (30 and 26 respectively!). 58.4% of the medals came from female Athletes, while 36.3% from males and the rest from mixed events. An boost in the female to male distribution of medals from Rio 2016 and a remove indicator that women sports in the us is going strong. The two programmes most likely ‘underdelivering’ for team USA were Athletics (6 medals less than Rio, a lot more on that when I will talk about athletics) and Gymnastics (6 medals compared to 12 in Rio) clearly impacted by the Larry Nassar scandal, something I hope nobody will ever experience in sport anywhere.
China won a lot more medals than in Rio with excellent enhancements in Diving, Gymnastics and shooting and benefitting from the new chances in Karate. 53.4% of the medals coming from female athletes. 18 a lot more medals a lot more than Rio were not sufficient to regain the very first location because of one gold medal difference with the US. So Chinese sport steady at the top with new skill coming up.
Japan did extremely well as expected and predicted, nevertheless still 11 gold medals away from the second place, and in overall 30 medals away from team China, indicating that us and China at the moment are the sports superpowers also because of the population aspect and the high high quality of different sporting programmes. Japan is definitively on the ‘up’ on the medal table with a steady boost in overall medals and golds considering that the Beijing 2008 games. The games were definitively a success from a performance standpoint. In fact, Japan won medals in 20 sports in Tokyo vs the 11 sports in Rio benefitting (as expected) the most from the new sports with medals in Skateboarding, Surfing, sport Climbing and Karate. Judo and Wrestling stay the strongholds of the Japanese programme, but a great deal of development was shown in lots of other sports and Paris 2024 will tell us if the investment and effort of the last few years has contributed to establishing a successful system or if this was all geared towards the house Games.
Japan at the last 4 Olympic Games. number of athletes entered, Gold, Silver, Bronze and overall Medals
Team GB complied with in 4th location with an exceptional performance, replicating the number of medals won in Beijing in 2008. team GB won medals in 18 sports vs 19 in Rio 2016 and had 16 4th locations indicating that the British sporting system is still the very best in Europe (if we just consider the geography…not the Brexit). Cycling and Swimming were the big medal winners for team GB who also benefitted from a new kind (Skateboarding) and a new event (Team Triathlon, which is by the method a brilliant event!). The investment is still there and is extremely considerable (352m British pounds poured into sports) and clearly the approach is working, considering that team GB has been constantly performing considering that Beijing and has been the only programme to enhance and maintain performances for two olympic cycles complying with the house games. However, all that glitters is not gold.
Data from data journalist Tom Saunders
Rowing and Athletics had a low return for investment for team GB. The rowing programme has been historically one of the ‘golden eggs’ of team GB and this time around only returned two medals in spite of getting £24,655,408 in investment with a cost per medal extremely similar to the Bronze medal in Hockey (£12,905,612). Badminton and Rugby 7s also did no do in addition to expected, and there were few disappointments in other sports too. Also, the normal difficulties with the funding design were discussed in the media doubting why there are still athletes that requirement crowdfunding to be at the games and/or win medals (see the BMX programme or the Rugby 7s). The British sportingsystem is potentially one of the most complicated in the World, and having worked there I can state that conversations about funding are always complex and need the complete comprehending of exactly how the system works. Not the topic for this post, but people must not compare the UK system with any other systems, because of the complexities in funding, the structure of house nations and lots of other things. So, in my view, Tokyo was a success for team GB in extremely tough situations and I understand exactly how much work and planning goes into Olympic preparations so a big well done to my former colleagues for another extraordinary outcome.
What I can state is that for sure ‘the system’ is fairly healthy and still able to do with this volume of medal outputs, nevertheless I cannot spare some criticism not to the system but to the general British sporting landscape in terms of chances for athletes.
Despite all the success, the system solely depends upon public funding from UK Sport. So, if you are successful, you win medals, you get a lot more money to sustain and establish programmes. The moment you don’t, funding is taken away, and you quite much vanish and/or go back to be an amateur setup. It has occurred before (see right here or here) and it will occur again. sports are still not able to raise funds and/or indication meaningful sponsorship offers to enhance and/or sustain their programmes, so it is not uncommon to see crowdfunding pages of athletes, personal donors supplying funds, athletes selling their Olympic product to fund themselves, or athletes getting into financial obligation to fund an Olympic participation. A great introduction of lottery money is available here, and I don’t want to noise important of the funding system. So I requirement to make this clear: without UK sport funding, there would be no team GB success and this funding produced the chance for lots of sports and athletes to succeed. However, this is the only sporting system in the world without any bonuses for medalists and NGBs/Clubs not able to raise meaningful sponsorships to take them to the next level. In a country where Football/Rugby/Cricket are kings, in spite of all Olympic success you still don’t have expert leagues in team sports like anywhere else in Europe (Hockey, Handball, Volleyball, Water Polo, Basketball), and restricted employment systems for private sports able to supply a risk-free income for sportsmen and a task after their retirement. Doing sports in the UK is costly and still not available to many. facilities are costly to hire and unsustainable for lots of clubs and up until something changes, sporting success will only be possible if there will be government funding. I truly hope that a lot more sports can be televised a lot more often in the UK in buy to raise their profile and ideally attract a lot more sponsorship. The women’s football league in England is most likely a great example, but would like to be able to switch on the BBC someday and see a game from the national league of Hockey/Volleyball/Handball/Basketball or the national triathlon/badminton/table tennis championships just like I perform in other parts of the World. There is immense skill anywhere in the UK and I believe at times for lots of it is not possible to be a full time sportperson because of the monetary challenges, and so I hope a lot more chances will be produced to make the system better and less reliant on public funding. In the meantime, the government revealed £232M investment for Paris 2024, showing constant commitment to sport and this will allow successful federations to build on their programmes and less successful ones to evaluation and rebuild with sufficient funding.
ROC had the normal high high quality of performances, nevertheless I am not sure if I must compare them to Russia in previous editions. This is the lowest ranking the team got in the contemporary era. The ‘suspension’ of the Russian team because of the national doping programme is a controversial aspect which has drawn in of program a great deal of debate. The ROC team won medals in 18 sports with a lot of coming from Wrestling, Shooting, Fencing and Gymnastics. It is tough to analyse if this was a great or bad performance because of the situation, and so, we will have to wait and see in Paris after the ‘ban’ ends.
Australia is back on the higher part of the table thanks to their extremely successful swimming programme (21 medals, 9 Golds) and their trustworthy Rowing Programme (4 medals, 2 Golds). Medals came from 15 sports and a few from new sports too, showing that in spite of the radical modifications in the AIS, and the controversies around spending, the system is fairly healthy and capable of creating world leading performers. thanks to the improve of having been provided Brisbane 2032 by the IOC, I anticipate another increase in the ranks in the next two editions culminating with Brisbane 2032 as hold nation. I truly hope to see a lot moresports establishing impressive performers in Australia, a country with significant sporting and competitive culture, with exceptional specialists and a excellent history in sports science support.
Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy had all extremely similar performances. I believe the Netherlands did superwell thinking about the population size when compared to France/Germany and Italy and showed some depth also winning medals in 10 sports. For the orange team, cycling and athletics were the primary sports bringing house valuable metal with some outstanding athletes capable of multi-medaling (Sifan Hassan and Annemiek van Vleuten above all). extremely delighted for my good friend Charles Van Commenee and the success of the Dutch athletics team (8 medals is quite great I would say). dissatisfied by the women’s handball team. I believed they could get into the semifinals, regrettably I believe they underperformed when it mattered. The Dutch system does not benefit from the exact same level of investment of the UK and depends on a great club system and has also excellent leagues in a lot of team sports (read about the Hockey league here). Centralised national team camps are facilitated by geography and great training facilities like Papendal can supply competence to the dutch system. They had a record breaking performance and I can see their system getting steady in the top 10 of nations.
France won medals in 16 sports with Judo and Fencing being the normal sports providing the most medals. Also, they did the ‘double’ in Handball winning Gold in both the guy and Women’s competition continuing the custom of being a handball superpower in recent years. excellent medal in Volleyball and fretting performances in Swimming and Athletics with as well bit coming from Cycling. If they want to do well in Paris, these are the sports where they requirement to discover skill able to win medals.
Germany won medals in 14 sports with Canoeing being the primary sport for their programme. There is nothing coming from their team sports anymore, 8 medals in overall coming from Swimming, Athletics and Cycling. Not sure what is truly happening in Germany, they went type 44 medals in London 2012 (ranking 6th) to 37 in Tokyo (ranking 9). It is one of the nations showing a decreased in performance in the last few years in specific when you compare it to the very first edition as a unified team in Barcelona in 1992 when they won 82 medals and placed 3rd in the medal table. I believed the Handball men’s team could do something with coach Gislasson, but they were outclassed by Egypt in the quarter finals. Overall, it seems that German sport is underperforming compared to its wonderful past. The reasons are unclear, and I would definitively like to understand a lot more about this. few issues with their coaches appeared as well (here and here). Is the German system fading away? What occurred to all the work done on training methodology, athletes’ testing, skill ID, technology? The past doping history of Germany is well recognised, so present results must not be compared to the 70s and 80s age of the two German teams. However, this decline is significant, in specific when thinking about the new sports and a lot more medals added to the Olympic Programme. Does Germany requirement to modernise the approach to sport? Do structures in location requirement some revisions? Or is it just an regrettable year? We have to wait just 3 years up until Paris, I believe only then we will understand if Germany can maintain the top 10 setting in the medal table.
Finally some considerations for Italy, the last nation in the top 10 in the medal table. The Italian team had a amazing two weeks in Tokyo, winning 40 medals in 16 sports. With Swimming, Fencing and Athletics being the very best sports with the most number of medals won. Athletics was the big surprise with 5 gold medals which projected the Italian team in the top 10. Italy won 20 bronze medals and had lots of 4th places. Italy competed in all sports except badminton, field hockey (never qualified a team to the games), football (unbelievable I would say…), handball (never qualified a team to the games) and rugby sevens. Italy reached and surpassed its own record for the greatest number of Olympic medals won in a single edition beating the record of 36 in the house games in Rome in 1960 (another era) and also had finest ever games in Athletics winning five gold medals (Gianmarco Tamberi in high jump, Lamont Marcell Jacobs in
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