Do hosts win more medals? Are athletes getting older? 128 years of Olympic history in 5 charts
- Written by The Conversation
The modern Olympic Games offer a window into almost 130 years of social and cultural change.
They reflect the fall of nations, war, the shifting winds of culture and the way people engage with sports, fitness and competition.
We’ve taken data from every modern summer Olympics to see which sports have stood the test of time, the changing age of athletes, and whether hosting really gives your team an advantage.
Sports come and go
The Olympics have evolved dramatically over the years, gaining new sports and dropping others.
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics had the largest number of sports of any games, with 33 sports (and 339 medal events), while the first modern games in Athens in 1896 only had nine.
Some sports that are no longer in the Olympics include ballooning, fishing, firefighting, alpinism (mountain climbing, judged by the mountains climbed in the four years between games), kaatsen (a type of handball) and bicycle polo.
New sports that entered recently are surfing, sports climbing and, in the 2024 Paris games, breaking (known by some as breakdancing).
Olympics are a young person’s game
On average, since the start of the modern Olympics in 1896, about two-thirds of athletes who competed were 20–30 years old. Most athletes compete in their first games between the ages of 20–25. Very few athletes compete over the age of 40: fewer than 4% of all athletes.
Age, and death, didn’t stop John Quincy Ward, however. Though he died in 1910 at the age of 79, his artwork competed at the 1928 Olympics in the (now defunct) sculpture event – he didn’t win. Ward is one of only 24 other athletes who have competed posthumously, mostly in the arts though a few were part of the alpinism event and died while climbing mountains.
While the vast majority of athletes only compete in one or two Olympics, almost 900 people attended five or more games. Incredibly, three athletes have competed in nine games and one athlete, equestrian athlete Ian Millar, has competed in 10 Olympics.
The most competitive events
Athletics events attract the most competitors through the history of the modern Olympics.
However, digging deeper into the data reveals some countries have cumulatively sent more athletes in different sports:
- Argentina, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Malaysia and New Zealand sent more hockey players than any other sport
- Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Mongolia, Syria and Türkiye mostly send wrestling athletes
- around 9,385 footballers from around the world have competed at the games – but almost 20% (1,632) of those came from just 18 nations, including Brazil (341), Korea (209) and Egypt (195).
Australia’s medal tally is on the rise
Australia has hosted two Olympic Games – Melbourne in 1956 and Sydney in 2000 – and its medal numbers shot up in the games before and after. However, Australia had its best gold medal run in the 2020 Tokyo and 2004 Athens games.
Medals can bring big money to the athletes who win them. Since 2019, the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) pays A$20,000, $15,000 and $10,000 for gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively. This is likely to go up as Australia prepares to host the 2032 games.
Home team advantage
Hosting the Olympics seems to deliver a hometown advantage an edge.
The chart below shows the top 12 countries by medal tally and how they stacked up when they hosted the Olympics. Almost all of them have a meaningful boost, either making or breaking their top tallies during a home games.
There is one unique standout, though. Hungary has become a powerhouse in picking up medals – astounding considering it hasn’t hosted an Olympics.
France is about to embark on its third Olympic games, sharing the silver medal for number of games hosted with the UK – gold goes to the US, which has hosted four times. It remains to be seen if France can live up to their incredible medal success in the 1900 Paris games but the data shows that 2024 is their best hope.
