How Did China get so Good?
How Did China get so Good?
How did China all of a sudden get so good at the Olympics? For all of China's Olympic preformances, their progress was very linear.
China has only been in the Olympics since 1984. That's 7 Olympics. The data for their first two Olympics is skewed because it was so new to their country. The following 4 Olympics show steady improvement therefore I am limiting my analysis to the most recent 5 olympics.
Year Gold Silver Bronze Total % Change
1984 15 8 9 32 Too Early
1988 5 11 12 28 Too Early
==================================== Start Comparison
1992 16 22 16 54 0%
1996 16 22 12 50 -8%
2000 28 16 15 59 20%
2004 32 17 14 63 10%
2008 51 21 28 100 80%
It looks like China gets about 50 to 60 medals with an increase of about 3 medals per Olympics. Then in 2008 they get 47 more medals, almost double their normal output.
If you plot that performance for 2008 they should have gotten about 65 to 70 medals including about 35 gold medals.
That would have been a pretty decent performance, but they crushed that with 100 medals and 51 golds. How could this happen?
Well I have a theory.
Lets compare what events China got their medals in and also see if the winners of those events are based on judges or not.
I broke down the events into two categories:
Category 1: Events where your score is based solely on a judge. These events include gymnastics, swimming synchronized stuff, diving, boxing, judo, taekwondo, etc.
Category 2: Events where your score is based only on time, points, weight, distance, etc. These events include weight lifting, basketball, tennis, softball, baseball, swimming, running, throwing, shooting, badminton, table tennis, etc.
The top 7 finishers at Beijing were the US (110), China(100), Russia (72), England (47), Australia (46), Germany (41) and France (40).
G
S
B
United States Olympic Medals
36
38
36
China Olympic Medals
51
21
28
Russian Federation Olympic Medals
23
21
28
Great Britain Olympic Medals
19
13
15
Australia Olympic Medals
14
15
17
Germany Olympic Medals
16
10
15
France Olympic Medals
7
16
17
How do these medals breakdown based on category? See below:
Gold by judges
Medal by judges
total
United States Olympic Medals
2
15
110
China Olympic Medals
24
40
100
Russian Federation Olympic Medals
6
14
72
Great Britain Olympic Medals
1
5
47
Australia Olympic Medals
1
2
46
Germany Olympic Medals
1
5
41
France Olympic Medals
0
10
40
If we take a look at the events won by each country we can see that China won 40 of their 100 medals in judged events. The US and Russia won only 15 and 14 respectively. And of the golds, China won 24 of their 51 golds in judged events. The US and Russia won 2 and 6 respectively.
The data that stand out so much is the 24 and 40. They are not even close to any other country. It should have been about 5 golds and 15 medals. That's a difference of 25 medals and would have put China in the 75 medal range where they belong.
I think that the judges were swayed by China's generosity of freebies and perks and benefits and a feeling that China is really trying to be a trustworthy member of the world.
The downside of all this China loving is that Japan, Russia and Romania got bumped.
Russia went from 92 medals in 2004 to 72 in 2008.
Japan went from 37 medals in 2004 to 25 in 2008.
Romania went from 19 medals in 2004 to 8 in 2008.
Normally good competitors in gymnastics and diving.
My prediction: China gets 70 medals in London in 2012. Back to normal.