The True Olympians

This project has been designed to analyze the progress of participating nations and athletes at the Summer and Winter Olympic events over a period of 120 years.

The datasets were loaded onto Microsoft Power BI via Excel CSV sheets and the visualization reported converted to pdf for sharing. The analysis is broken down into 3; Summer Games, Winter Games and Overall combo of both

Here are some insights pulled from the Overall data:

• Over the 120 year period of the Games, nations have been represented 1183 times by more than 134K athletes.
• The United States has had almost 19000 athletes represent them, while France and Great Britain have both sent more than 12000 athletes, Italy has sent 11000 athletes while Canada has had just over 9000 athletes represent them at the Games.
• When it comes to overall success, the U.S understandably has won the most medals collectively, tallying 5637 podium finishes as well as the most tallies for each of the 3 winning medals, the USSR is 2nd with 2503 podium finishes while Germany has had 2165 podium finishes.
• The U.S has had a strong hold on medal wins over time but other countries such as Canada, France, Germany and Great Britain have began levelling the playing field since the turn of the century.
• There has always been a large disparity in the proportion of male athletes to female athletes by an average of 500% at individual tournaments but thankfully, that the difference has a major reduction since the Atlanta '96 Summer Games
• Overall, there have been ~197K male athletes to just ~75K female athletes
• The most popular sports by participation over time have been Athletics (39K), Gymanstics (27K), Swimming (23K), Shooting & Cycling (11K)
• The most popular events have been Men's Football (5.7K Games), Ice Hockey (4.8K), Floor Hockey (4K), Water Polo (3.4K) and Basketball (3K)

For the Winter Games:

• Almost 19000 athletes have represented 221 nations over a 72 year period
• Canada has the lead when it comes to gold medals with a count of 305 followed by the USSR with 250 and the USA at 166. The United States still maintains the lead in overall podium finishes
• While the disparity between male athletes to females is lesser than the overall average at ~250-300%, the difference hasn't reduced over time to indicate progress in female participation
• The winter games have had ~33K male athletes to ~15K female athletes
• The most popular sports appear to be Cross Country Skiing and Apline Skiing, both with approximately 9000 participants each
• The most popular winter events have been Mens Ice Hockey and Bobsleigh events

Data Source: Maven Analytics, November 2021