Tokyo 2020: Evaluation of the elite sport expenditures and success

Does economy determine a country’s performance at Olympics?

In this article carried out by Veerle De Bosscher, Simon Shibli et al. (2021), they studied the relationship between the funds and the performance results in 15 nations and provinces in the last Olympics. They found a strong positive correlation (0.80) between the absolute amount of money invested in elite sport and the absolute number of medals won in Tokyo 2020.

There is a strong positive correlation (0.80) between the absolute amount of money invested in elite sport and the absolute number of medals won in Tokyo 2020.

The Hindu Post also published an article about if economy determine the performance at Olympics. They concluded: “The size of the economy is strongly linked to a country’s performance at the Olympics. In general, the bigger the size of a country’s economy, the more the medals, with very few exceptions such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Ukraine. At the Tokyo Olympics, the top 10 countries in the medals tally won 54% of all the medals. Eight of them are high-income countries. On the other hand, factors such as the size of the population and the Human Development Index have little bearing on a nation’s performance at the Olympics”.

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