If you want to read anything halfway decent on the internet in English, it invariably comes out of America. This means regularly bathing in a certain, mildly repulsive worldview. It approaches something like you are broadly supportive of the American imperial project winning as many gold medals as it can, insanely sorting the medal table by total medals won, throwing your hands up at problems other countries have solved with simple regulation and thumping chests about DOMINATION before disappearing from international sport for another four years.
At the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, the United States didn’t seem to win as many gold medals as expected. In fact, the US had as many as China and only twice as many as Japan and Australia. When I checked, the US had won just as many gold medals as it had in 1948, three-quarters of a century earlier.
What’s the go with that?
‘How many countries are there in the world?’ is a question with a dynamic answer, one that depends on your definition of ‘country’ and the geopolitical situation at any given point in time. The number of UN member states functions as a good approximation, even though it can’t answer questions like ‘Taiwan?’, ‘Palestine?’ or ‘Papal States?’ with anything approaching efficiency.
The number of countries in the world has exploded since the end of the second World War. Among other very complex historical machinations, the non-European imperial citizens of Old Europe declined white supremacy and decolonised, and then political and economic instability brought low the spectre of International Communism, leaving the liberal capitalist order created by the United States alone in the world, frantically searching for a new enemy lest the empire returning home causes America’s theoretical unity to dissolve in the breeze. You can see how that’s gone over the last two or three decades.
Those newly minted states turned up to the Olympics as soon as they could. Having an IOC delegation is up there with UN membership, an anthem, a monopoly on violence and having soveriegnty within one’s internationally recognised borders as one of the many potential definitions of a ‘country’.
From 1948 to 2024, the number of Olympic delegations increased 350%. The number of delegations winning at least one gold has only increased 278%, which outpaces the 235% growth in the number of gold medals available to win.
Part of this gold medal inflation is because the IOC keeps adding sports to the program. The IOC wants to keep a lid on the number of athletes and venues, which is what drives hosting costs, but there’s nothing stopping the IOC from reducing the number of entrants per event and having more events for the same overall headcount, provided that the new sports can be catered to with temporary grandstands and don’t require a $5 billion stadium. Some besuited gremlin in a back office in Switzerland has probably done the maths to prove that broadcast revenue rises with ratings which rises with medal events and so everyone can have some more bribery, as a treat.
Part of the inflation can be attributed to the Olympics achieving gender parity. It wasn’t that long ago that the women’s program was a shadow of the men’s and now every sport has a mixed relay. While gender parity just requires a few extra changerooms and is one of those bare minimum things we should come to expect of globe-spanning cultural colossi, it is surprising that the craven, corrupt and ossified International Olympic Committee got there first (or around about the same time as FIFA). Compare that to professional sports and there’s a long way for them to go.
Despite this inflation, and that the mechanisms of the inflation would generally suit the established nations as much as anyone, the impact of Cold War-inspired "investment" peaked in the Reagan-era 1980s and has since ebbed. In the 21st century, the previously most dominant nations are winning as many gold medals but not as frequently.
The United States has won as many gold medals in the two games of the 2020s as it did in the two following the second World War. There are nearly 200 million more Americans in 2024 than 1948 and the economy is approximately 100 times bigger, two factors for which winning gold medals are heavily correlated. The United States maintains - nominally, at least - economic, political and military hegemony over the world in a way that is unprecedented in history.
Nonetheless, it is the same number of gold medals.
The United States won an average of 24.2% of gold medals from 1948 through 1968. From 1972 to 1996, excluding the outlier 1980 and 1984 boycotts, that rate fell to 15.8%. In the 21st century, it is just 13.0%.
Paris is just the latest stop on a long-running downswing for the Americans but unlike the Soviet and colonial European empires to have crumbled since 1948, the United States is still, basically, intact.
There’s plenty of reasons why this downswing might exist:
There are more nations now, which has deepened the talent pool and increased competitiveness of non-American athletes
The dissipation of Cold War hostilities has mitigated the American motivation to compete (refer to Germany’s 1976 peak and subsequent decline)
More complex identities mean athletes developed by American sporting infrastructure choose not to represent the USA at the Olympics (refer Mondo Duplantis below, this may also have a different effect in e.g. Germany, France)
American football is consuming their entire culture, sporting and otherwise
America is essentially a failed state and producing elite athletic talent requires direct state financial intervention (refer to Britain’s share before and after London 2012, America’s ongoing health infrastructure crisis)
But perhaps none that are conclusive from this cursory analysis.
A bounceback at 2028 in Los Angeles should be expected due to homeground advantage, if nothing else. This effect may be enhanced if the geopolitical situation between the US and Russia and other states cools further, as there seems to be no sign of the war in Ukraine abating. The outcomes of this might range from boycotts to Russia simply not having the available capital, human and financial, to invest in sports and the Olympics. This will follow with jubilation that America has seen its turning point and the Empire is Back.
In reality, Paris could prove to be an inflection point for the rest of the world. While the results of Atlanta can be partly explained by the long tail Soviet era investment in countries who switched allegiance from the USSR to the rest of the world in the mid-90s, Paris awarded the largest share of gold medals to non-Great Powers since 1948, when Sweden (17 gold), Hungary (10) and Finland (8) were relevant.
On one hand, the IOC would welcome a more diverse pool of winners, which would only help further entrench the Olympic brand in the hearts and minds of billions of people around the world. On the other hand, NBC wants American winners and they pay the bills.
Who will win? My money’s on the long arc of history, as always.
The grace, the beauty of sports
From the current world record of 6.25m, you have to go down 18 centimetres to find the next best guy not named Duplantis or Bubka. Jonathan Liew captured the moment almost as well as hearing the crowd erupt on video.
Notes
I’d love to share some of my favourite moments but the IOC has disabled that media due to copyright, so we’ll just have to use our imaginations. The guy falling over during the women’s time trial bringing Taylor Knibb her bike. Femke Bol’s last leg in the mixed 4x400m relay. The Seine is full of shit; no one will be stupid enough to suggest swimming in the Brisbane River. Daniel Wiffen from Ireland retired from marathon swimming on the spot.
Another Jonathan Liew piece: Fish out of water: why Léon Marchand is right to snub popular French chatshow
Pablo Torre had a really good expose on the corruption in sabre fencing.
JK Rowling invents a trans Olympian to get mad at and There are no transgender women boxing in Paris. I had no context for this previously but with the bare minimum reading, I’m surprised (not really) how many people are taking the word of the Russian-backed IBA in good faith.
I shed a tear, mostly because I was tired but also genuine pride in the Golden Comet, when Australia’s men’s team pursuit won the gold medal. I didn’t cry when my own kids were born.
I had a great time watching volleyball, sport climbing and fencing. I bypassed the Raygun meanness/grifting?. It wasn’t anywhere near as embarrassing as the performance of the 7s teams or the Matildas, all of whom were supposed to be good. I realised I might have a problem when I was watching finals of flatwater kayak and canoe because there was nothing else on.
Good to see that the quicker modern pentathlon format has not done anything for the interest or quality of the sport. Having Olympic grade fencers (and show jumpers) perform in the same space as pentathletes, it’s clear how much of a gap exists between the all-rounders and the specialists. Nonetheless, 14,000 people turned out to Versailles, which is frankly baffling because other than the laser run, it is brutally dull. The president of the UIPM got a fancy dinner as a send-off after 31 years.
The Paris Olympics' eco-friendly catering plans have hit a snag due to athletes' high meat demands.
Sick, Sad World of Sports is still a going concern but it has the lowest possible priority in my life. That said, unlike last year, I have been collecting links for an end of year post that will be something along the lines of ‘don’t worry about sports, Saudi Arabian money is eating the world’.