With the 2018 Olympic Winter Games now less than 10 months away, I have started looking at some stats related to the Winter Olympics. Since I often work with the US Olympic Committee at the Olympics, this has also entailed looking at @TeamUSA stats. One interesting stat is that the USA has won 96 gold medals at the Winter Olympics, and barring a complete reversal of recent performances, will go over 100 in PyeongChang.

I was also interested in how the USA stacks up on the overall medal list, and I noted that they are second, behind Norway in both gold medals and total medals won, but also that, over the last few Winter Olympics, they have moving up the list. The top four nations at the Olympic Games, in terms of medals won, are as follows:

I’m not going to look any further at Austria. It looks like it is close to the top 3 nations, only slightly behind Germany, but in fact, it is much further behind than the above stats reveal. That is because Germany only includes medals won as a combined Germany, and from 1968-88 both West Germany (FRG) and East Germany (GDR) competed and if you include those medals, Austria is far behind.

Over the last few Olympics, the USA has improved a great deal and seemed to be closing in on Norway in terms of medals won and golds won. I was curious if this trend continued, when the USA might overtake Norway, if they did at all, or perhaps Germany might also do so.

Germany would be ahead now if the country had not been divided. Counting Germany and the GDR, they would have 126 gold medals and 340 medals, and lead both lists. Counting Germany and West Germany, they would have 98 golds, and 269 medals, distancing Austria. If you count a combined German team, counting all German medals, they have 137 golds and 379 medals, far ahead in both categories. That is, however, somewhat of a specious argument as from 1968-88 such a United Germany would have had 6-8 competitors in many individual events, far more than usually allowed.

For future predictions, the important years to look at are 1992-2014, because in 1992 Germany was again a unified nation. In addition, in the 21^st century, Norway has not led the medal list, either in golds, or total medals, at any Winter Olympics, except for golds in 2002. It would appear that both Germany and the United States are catching up.

So are Norway’s days at the top of the Winter Olympics medal table numbered? We looked at the average number of golds and medals won at each Winter Olympics since 1992 by Norway, Germany, and the USA. We then predicted what would happen at the next few Winter Olympics, if all three nations continued to win medals at the same rate they have since 1992.

Here’s what the table looks like, going from 1992-2070:

That’s a pretty busy table but here is what the chart of these projected medal tables look like:

As you can see in this chart, Norway starts out ahead in medals and gold medals, and stays ahead through 2070, although Germany and the United States both close the gaps slightly.

So will the USA or Germany topple Norway from the top of the Winter Olympic medal table? Not in my lifetime, and probably not in this century, unless things change.

Now it may be that they will change. The trend has been to add more and more X-generation and X-Games sports, such as freestyle skiing and snowboarding, and the United States has excelled at these sports. Germany not so much, but Germany is dominant in sliding sports. Unfortunately they’ve run out of them since we have sports going down the mountain sitting (bobsled), lying prone (skeleton), and lying supine (luge). I’m not sure how else they can slide down the mountain, unless they come up with a standing sliding event – ice surfing?

The above also assumes that the number of events on the Winter Olympics Program will remain about the same. The IOC has tended to add more and more events, but there are not many more Winter Olympic sports to add, and it’s hard to predict how these numbers may change if the number of events increases. It will depend on which events are added, whether they favor traditional winter events, favoring Norway, or they add X-sports, favoring the United States, and less so, Germany.

So for the foreseeable future, unless the Winter Olympic Program drastically changes, I think Norway will continue to lead the all-time Winter Olympic medal table through the 21^st century.

 

In late November 2016 Hilary Evans (@OlyStatman) and I published a blog on this site about the IOC (International Olympic Committee) re-testing of the 2008-12 Olympic drug tests. In that blog, we noted that there were 104 positive tests for doping at those 2 Games, and gave details of which nations, which sports, and which drugs were involved. Please see https://olympstats.com/2016/11/28/summary-of-the-ioc-re-testing-from-2008-2012-to-date/ for the original summary.

Since that blog was published the re-testing has gone on, and the IOC has actually had six further releases in IOC News, announcing further sanctions. As a result, the 104 positive tests number is now only a memory, and today’s blog is to give a further update on the current status of the IOC re-tests from the 2008-12 Olympics.

As of 1 April 2017, there have now been 182 positive drug tests from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, which includes the original positive tests and the positive re-tests over the previous 20 months or so. Of these, there were 81 positives from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and 101 from the 2012 London Olympics. Of these 182 positives, 9 athletes tested positive at both the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, so there have been 173 athletes sanctioned. The 9 doping Grand Slam winners are as follows, with Ilyin losing 2 gold medals and Ostapchuk losing a gold and a bronze:

In the above, you will note that 5 athletes were from Belarus and 2 from Kazakhstan. Of the 182 sanctions given, the national breakdown is as follows:

Of these, 65.4% are from former Soviet nations. While quite high, that is better than in the 28 November 2016 blog, when, of the 104 positive tests, 82.7% came from former Soviet nations.

The breakdown by sport is as follows:

Here, athletics (track & field) accounts for 56.6% of the positive tests, while athletics and weightlifting together comprise 84.1% of all the positive tests. It should be noted that the equestrian positives involve doping of the horses, in most cases with capsaicin, a topical anti-inflammatory medication derived from chili peppers.

As to what the athletes are taking, the trend is the same as back in November 2016 with the three biggest offenders being turinabol (dehydrochloromethyltestosterone), stanozolol (7β-Hydroxy-17α-methyl-5α-androstano[3,2-c]pyrazole), both of which are anabolic steroids, and biological passport offenses. The breakdown by drugs is given in the following table. Note that the total comes to well over 182 (222) because many athletes tested positive for 2 or more drugs.

Please refer again to our previous blog (https://olympstats.com/2016/11/28/summary-of-the-ioc-re-testing-from-2008-2012-to-date/) in which I gave details of exactly what the above drugs were and what they are purported to do. In addition, the legend to the final table in this blog gives brief information on each drug.

As noted in that previous blog, it is very difficult to give full details about medals lost and medals won by nations. In doping sanctions, the results are changed by the International Federations (IFs), while the medals are removed and re-allocated by the IOC. Thus we can provide good information about medals lost, but re-allocation of medals can be a slow process because of appeals to the CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) and further legal appeals. Because of the legal risks involved, the IOC moves slowly in re-allocation of medals.

As I noted in some recent tweets, however, re-allocation of Olympic medals is not a given. The classic case in 2008-12 has occurred in the 2012 men’s 94 kg weightlifting event, in which 6 of the top 8 finishers, including the top 4 finishers, all tested positive. Theoretically, the 9^th place finisher, Tomasz Zielinski of Poland, could move up to a bronze medal. However, as of 1 April, the IOC has re-allocated the gold and silver medals (to Saeid Mohammadpourkarkaragh of Iran and Kim Min-Jae of Korea, respectively), but has not re-allocated the bronze medal, likely because Zielinski had a doping positive in Rio for spironolactone.

However, as of 1 April 2017, 74 medals have been lost for doping positives in 2008-12, with 18 gold medals removed. The breakdown is as follows, with the detailed breakdown first, followed by tables listing medals lost by sports and nations:

For completeness, at the end of this blog, we will list all 182 positive tests to date, which also details medals removed, sorted, in order, by year, nation, sport, and gender.

I will also repeat a paragraph from the November 2016: “These athletes did break the rules and this certainly looks terrible, but it’s important to remember one thing about this. The IOC tries to catch the drug cheats, more so than in most professional sports, notably in the four major pro sports in the United States (although baseball has gotten much better in recent years). Further, the WADA penalties are far more punitive than those in US professional sports, especially the NFL where a positive drug test costs you 4 games, or ¼^th of a season, versus 2 calendar years or more in Olympic sports. It is easy to criticize the IOC for this plethora of positive tests, but one should also note that they took the trouble to do the re-testing, something we will almost never see from the NFL or other professional sports.”

So, in summary, the numbers have significantly increased since our last report on this in November 2016, however, the trends are similar. The most affected sports have been athletics and weightlifting, by far, and the nations involved have tended to be former Soviet nations, led by Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine. The testing is ongoing, so watch this space.

Table Legend for Violations: BPO = Biological passport offense; CERA = continuous erythropoietin receptor activator (increases red blood cell counts); Clen = Clenbuterol (sympathomimetic anabolic agent); Drost = Drostolone (anabolic steroid); EPO = Erythropoietin (increases red blood cell counts); GHRP-2 = growth hormone releasing peptide (pralmorelin) (increases growth hormone levels); Ipamo = Ipamorelin (GHRP analogue; increases growth hormone levels); Lasix = Furosemide (diuretic); Meth = Methandienone (anabolic steroid); Methen = Methenolone (anabolic steroid); MHX = Methylhexanamine (sympathomimetic amine = stimulant); MTri = Methyltrienolone (anabolic steroid); MTS = Methyltestosterone (anabolic steroid); Nandro = Nandrolone (anabolic steroid); Other AS (anabolic steroid) = 3a-hydroxy-5a-androst-1-en-17-one (anabolic steroid); Oxan = Oxandrolone (anabolic steroid); Propran = Propranolol (ß-blocker, slows heart rate, may increase cardiac output); Sibut = Sibutramine (oral anorexic; helps lose weight); Stan = Stanozolol (anabolic steroid); Testo = Testosterone (anabolic steroid); Turin = Turinabol (anabolic steroid).