Asian Participation and Performance at the Olympic Games

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/aepr.12118
• Published date: 01 January 2016
• Author: Kevin Stahler,Marcus Noland
• Date: 01 January 2016

Asian Participation and Performance at the

Olympic Games

Marcus NOLAND1,2† and Kevin STAHLER1

1Peterson Institute for International Economics and 2East-West Center

This paper examines Asian exceptionalism at the Olympics. Northeast Asian countries conform to

the statistical norm, whereas the rest of Asia lags, but this result obscures underlying distinctions.

Asian women do better than men. Non-Northeast Asia’s relative underperformance is due to the

men. Asian performance is uneven across events, finding more successin culturally connected and

weight-stratified contests. The models imply that China, Japan, and South Korea will place among

the top 10 medaling countries at the 2016 Games, whereas China will continue to close the medal

gap with the United States.

Key words: Asia, gender, Olympics, sports, women

JEL codes: J16, L83, F69, Z13

The Olympic Games are arguably the most globally organized sporting event on Earth

and hosting the games – whether Tokyo in 1964, Seoul in 1988, or most recently Beijing

in 2008 – can powerfully convey that an emerging power has arrived on the world stage.1

As we look to the future, this message appears to be extending to an entire region:

Pyeongchang, South Korea, is scheduled to host the 2018 Winter Games, followed by

Tokyo once again in 2020, and either Beijing or Almaty,Kazakhstan, in 2022.

But the Olympics have not always been this way. At the first modern Games in 1896,

of the 14 participating nations that took home medals, all were European, American, or

Australian men. Even immediately after World War II, the Summer Games and, espe-

cially, the Winter Games were still predominantly a showcase for European male athletic

talent: At London and St. Moritz 1948, European or American men constituted 62% and

82% of total athletic participants, respectively. Tokyo’s hosting of the 1964 Summer

Games was notable not only because it highlighted Japan’s rebirth after the devastation

of World War II, but because it was also the first non-European or former European

colony to host the Games.

In 1912, Japan became the first Asian country to make an appearance at the Games,

followed by the Philippines in 1924, and Burma (Myanmar), China, Singapore, and

South Korea in 1948 (appendix table 1 in Noland & Stahler, 2015a).2In the post-War

period, Asian athletic prowess continued to rise along with its growing economic power.

We thank the International Olympic Committee for its provision of data used in this paper, and

participants in the Asia Economic Policy Review Conference for helpful comments on an earlier

draft.

†Correspondence: Marcus Noland, Peterson Institute for International Economics, 1750 Massa-

chusetts Ave., NW., Washington, DC 20036, USA. Email: mnoland@petersoninstitute.org

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doi: 10.1111/aepr.12118 Asian Economic Policy Review (2016) 11, 70–90

© 2016 Japan Center for Economic Research70

Since the early 1980s, Asian competitors have made up roughly 11–15% of the total par-

ticipating athletes at the Summer Games (Figure 1) and between 7–12% at the Winter

Games.3Over time, however, Asian competitors have achieved even greater success

reaching the medal stand: at Los Angeles 1984, Asian athletes accounted for 12% of

medals (and 14% of gold medals), but by 2008, they were claiming 19% of total medals

and 27% of the gold medals (Figure 2). The improvement is even more striking in the

Winter Games, with Asian athletes going from earning only a single medal in 1988 to a

peak of 30 medals (12% of the total) in 2010.

Success has spread across Asian delegations.At Rome 1960, Japan took home 18 of 20

medals awarded to Asian countries, but by the 1980s, both China and South Korea had

also become formidable Olympic contenders. While these three Northeast Asian coun-

tries historically account for a lion’s share of Asian medals (Table 1), other Asian coun-

tries have consistently fielded about a quarter of total Asian athletes and claimed 13–16%

of Asian medals won since the 1990s at the Summer Games (Noland & Stahler, 2015a,

figure 5), although Asian pluralism at the Winter Olympics is still far more limited.4

Moreover, Asian female athletes have since made enormous strides from the first post-

War Games, where only a single woman from an Asian country (South Korea) competed

athletically at London 1948. Women have become a prominent and extremely successful

component of Asia’s overall performance at the Olympics.

There is a growing body of empirical research on the Olympics: Some of this work

(Bernard & Busse, 2004; Johnson & Ali, 2004; Lui & Suen, 2008) has tested the determi-

nants of total National Olympic Committee (NOC) medal outcomes at the Summer

Games. Other researchers (Klein, 2004; Leeds & Leeds, 2012; Lowen etal., 2014; Noland

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

18%

20%

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

Male Asian parcipants (lhs) Female Asian parcipants (lhs)

Percent total female parcipants Asian (rhs) Percent total male parcipants Asian (rhs)

Figure 1 Asia’s increased representation at the Summer Olympics.

Source: International Olympic Committee.

Marcus Noland and Kevin Stahler Asian Exceptionalism at the Olympic Games

© 2016 Japan Center for Economic Research 71