What's Behind the Number of Athletes Per Country In The London Olympics

Main Author: Hassan Fofana, Sports Consultant & Field Agent

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What's Behind the Number of Athletes Per Country in the 2012 London Olympics

                                                           By Hassan FOFANA

To start, I want to point out that this year’s summer Olympics opening ceremony in London was very disappointing for me. After 7 years of preparation, I was expecting a certain creativity and originality to match or at least come close to the previous opening ceremony in Beijing. But instead what we get is a fake jump out of the helicopter by the 86 years old Queen Elizabeth pretending to be James Bond’s partner so that she can show her sense of humour. Spare me the corny joke and let us not make this Olympics all about the Queen. At the opening ceremony in 2008 Beijing, we only saw the president of China Hu Jintao once for a few seconds as he declared the events open. I believe that the Opening ceremony in London was too narcissistic of their history to the point that they forgot to make a real connection to the true reason for which billions of viewers tuned in their televisions - the Olympics.

What made the opening ceremony in Beijing so unique and memorable was their successful combination of a new era of innovative technology and skilful, masterful manual execution while looking back on the past history of their nation, ending in a connection back to the Olympics. By far, the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony is the best yet since I became a loyal fan in 1992. With the bar being raised to the highest standard by China, I will not waste my time comparing both ceremonies; however, I hope to see a better closing ceremony. Today, however, I want to focus on how certain developing countries, small in geographical size and population, have large numbers of athletes in the Olympics, whereas other geographically small countries with large population, for example, Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Guinea, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and amongst others have few representative athletes. Furthermore, I will briefly talk about the larger, richer and more powerful developed countries such as Germany, Russia, China, USA, Great Britain, France, Brazil and Italy, amongst others, regarding how they are able to maintain success throughout the years as a way to introduce my next forthcoming article on “Sport in China.”

Watching this year’s opening ceremony, as a sport consultant, the first thing that I noticed was the number of representative Olympic athletes for each developing countries versus that of the rich and powerful developed countries. The number of Olympians for each developing and developed country has a lot to do with its government’s commitment to sport and how funding is managed; however, it all comes down to the efficiency of the management team in charge of each national sport department. While the US, China, Russia, Japan, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil, Germany and France, amongst others rich and developed countries are being represented by 200 or more athletes in the Olympics, a significant number of developing countries such as Guinea, Togo, Zambia, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Tanzania, Nepal, Rwanda, Ghana, DR Congo and Equator Guinea struggle to send more than 10 athletes. This is due to these countries’ failure to develop and build around their individual niche sports.

One can argue that because of their wealth, structural support and easy access to what is necessary to be successful in sport, it will be a shame for the developed countries not to succeed; however, keep in mind that everything is a work in progress and, with a solid foundation and intelligence, these countries were able to build a strong, reliable base for athletes. Remember sport is now a major business and as the government you have to know your market and you must determine the Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat (SWOT) of your sport department nationally. With this analysis, you will find your niche. This is exactly what most rich and developed countries did before implementing the groundwork suitable to their individual cultures and philosophies combined with strong financial, as well as ideological, commitment from the top.

Take Russia and China as examples. Their governments have made their priorities to design a system to develop talented athletes, as well as to continue developing the process in order to ensure and maintain a bright future in their national sport teams. Many other developing countries that have imitated this ideology have found success and are continuously increasing their numbers of athletes present in the Olympics or other global sporting events. These countries include Nigeria, Jamaica, South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, Angola, Trinidad and Tobago, Algeria and Egypt. Looking at Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica, they too found their niche in track and field to which they have committed to improve while simultaneously developing other sports such as swimming and boxing. In Africa, Senegal is an ideal model. They are currently developing their traditional wrestling, which is attracting a lot of attention from the sport world, while having significantly increased their presence across many other sports.

For most of these developing countries mismanagement of the budget designated to the sport department and lack of focus in the right areas are to blame for the limited sport development and Olympic representation by their respective countries. Most of these developing nations focus entirely on their most popular sports; most often soccer, and as a result other sports are neglected. With the stakes being so high in successfully qualifying for the Olympics, basing all your chances on one or maybe two sports makes the possibility of high or low numbers in the Olympics carelessly unpredictable. This is even truer for team sports in which either all or no athletes go. This is the reason why I appreciate and admire to some degree the American and Chinese systems of developing athletes.

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