Poland finished the Olympics in 17th place but drops after adding economic factor
23:53
Poland finished the Games in 17th place in the medal qualification. However, when we weigh the number of medals against economic factors, Poland falls only to 30th place. The best in this qualification, as in the general one, are China and Russia. The USA and Great Britain fall out of the lead.
"When we take into account, apart from the number of medals, the wealth of a given country in the form of GDP per capita, Poland falls to the 30th place. It turns out that our Olympic sport is not so effective, like the one grown in other countries – especially the smaller and less developed ones," Paweł Majtkowski, an eToro analyst on the Polish market, explained.
"We have modified the medal table in such a way that the number of medals received at the Tokyo Olympics (it is the sum of medals without distinguishing their color) by individual countries is divided by a coefficient which is the ratio of GDP per capita to the average value of GDP per capita for all countries (this is $10,925.7 for 2020). We took the GDP per capita in dollars in current prices from the World Bank for 2020. In a few cases, we have included the data for 2019, if not newer. We used data from the local statistical office in Taiwan and we used data from the International Monetary Fund for Venezuela, and we did not include the medal-winning Syria in the list, but there is no reliable comparative data for it,” the analyst said.
The places on the podium in the ranking are taken by countries with lower GDP per capita and with significant sports success. China and Russia (under the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee) are leading. The next places are taken by African countries such as Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia, which win much more medals in terms of their economic position. Among these countries, there is also Ukraine, which has won more medals than Poland, and its GDP per capita is 38 percent of the world average.
"Our modified medal table allows us to look at success in contemporary sport from a slightly different perspective. Although economic factors play an increasingly important role in sport, along with its greater professionalization and commercialization, it may turn out that money is not everything. What matters is how effectively they are spent,” an analyst summed up.
(WBJ)
,
