NZ’s Olympic performance the best of any major country   22 Aug 2016

Monday, August 22, 2016
NZ’s Olympic performance the best of any major country

With an impressive haul of 18 medals, New Zealand has outperformed the best predictions of the world’s number crunchers by a 186.2 per cent, according to a Massey Business School lecturer.

Dr Michael Naylor, from the School of Economics and Finance, has compiled a table of Olympic medal performace by combining the predictions of the three leading mathematical models used for this purpose.

“It is no good just using population per medal – between them the three leading models include factors like population, per capita income, weather, host country effect, past medal winners and financial support for athletes to create a more accurate view of each country’s performance.

“In the past week New Zealanders have been intensely interested in New Zealand’s relative Olympic medal performance, especially how we have gone compared to other countries,” Dr Naylor says.

“My calculations show that New Zealand outperformed what we could relatively expect to achieve by over 186 per cent. This means we were the best in the world if you remove countries like Grenada, which has won one medal over the past five games. These countries will always top a list ranked on a per capita basis.”

Dr Naylor’s calculations also mean New Zealand beat the performance of countries like Jamaica, Great Britain, China, and the United States. Our trans-Tasman neighbours, after another a disappointing Olympics campaign, ranked just 26th, he says.

Dr Naylor averaged the predictions of the most accurate models used to predict Olympic medals to formulate his table. These were the models of: Andrew Bernard from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business; Daniel Johnson of Colorado College; and a more recently developed model developed by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“The Bernard and Johnson models have proved to be uncannily accurate – above 95 per cent,” he explains.

“For the major countries, on a population basis, New Zealand is second to an amazing performance by Jamaica. On a GDP basis, we are sixth, and on a equal population and GDP basis we are fifth.

“When you include all countries, New Zealand ranks fourth on a population basis and 21st on a GDP basis. This is due to the effect of countries with small populations obtaining a rare medal.”

Dr Naylor reckons that New Zealand’s ‘natural medal performance’ is about seven medals in total, based on a long-term view of our performance across many Olympic Games.

“The Rio results might represent a-never-to-be-repeated outcome,” he concludes. “We need to celbrate it in style.”

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