The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
As speculation mounts about how many medals each country will win at the Athens Olympics, a report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) predicts the Canadian team will win 15 medals. This is one more than the 14 medals won in the 2000 Sydney Olympics and would place Canada 19th in the overall medal standings. The U.S., Russia, China and Germany are expected to lead the medal race in Athens. Notably, the U.S. medal count is projected to drop to 70, a difference of 27 medals from the 97 it received at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The PwC report is an updated version of a similar analysis published in 2000 that analyzed how medal performance at the Sydney Olympics was related to economic and political factors. This year's research has been extended to include data on medal performance from the four Olympics since 1988 in order to produce some benchmarks against which performance at the 2004 Athens Olympics can be judged. "The model can explain nearly 90 per cent of the variation in medal shares across countries in the last four Olympics," said John Hawksworth, UK Head of Macroeconomics at PwC. "Although there will always be other factors, most notably outstanding performances from individuals from poorer countries. David can sometimes beat Goliath in the Olympic arena." PwC predicts that Greece could be set to continue the success of host nations "punching above their economic weight." The report estimates Greece will take home 29 medals in Athens compared to the 13 it received at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The research suggests that even though it has been almost 15 years since the Berlin Wall came down, many former Soviet bloc countries will continue to win significantly more medals than would be predicted by the size of their economies. In general the number of medals won increases with the population and economic wealth of a country, even though this tends to be less than proportionate.
