Paris Olympics in Numbers

After years of preparation, today makes the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris.

This evening, many of the 10,500 athletes taking part in the XXXIII Olympiad will parade in a flotilla down the river Seine and these athlete’s will represent countries and territories from as many 206 National Olympic Committees.

Over the next two weeks millions of people from around the globe will tune in to 329 medal events across 32 sports. Up for the taking is 5,084 medals each of which has a token amount of Iron from the Eiffel Tower.

While Paris is the main host city, events will also take place in 16 other cities across France as well as surfing events in Tahiti.

With the Paris Olympics now underway (given that some football and rugby matches having already started), many will be interested to see whether Team GB will be able to return from France with more medals than Tokyo – or perhaps Rio.

According to UK Sport, they have set the target of winning between 50 and 70 medals over the next two weeks. Here they have said that “Our ambition remains for Team GB and Paralympics GB to secure a top-five position in the medal table at both Games, harnessing the power and platform that this success provides to drive positive impact in society.”

During the Tokyo games, UK Sport’s set a target of winning between 45-70 medals at Tokyo, something which it achieved given the final count of 65 medals (22 gold, 21 silver and 22 bronzes).

Though this was marginally lower than Rio’s medal count, Team GB’s funding was also marginally lower. For example, going into Tokyo Team GB’s Summer Olympic team saw nominal cuts of £6.3m which in real terms represented a more sizeable cut of £30.8m when accounting for inflation.

For Paris, UK Sport has invested £315 million of funding into the Olympic and Paralympic sports. A further, £70 million also been “channelled directly to 1,100 athletes in the form of Athlete Performance Awards.”

During the Tokyo games Britain won 2.08 medals per $100bn USD in GDP. While this was well north of the US’ 0.55 and China’s 0.39 figure, it remained behind that of New Zealand (9.48), Jamaica (31.27) and San Mario at (149.40). Overall, the UK slipped down to fourth place in the gold medal rankings and fourth in the overall number of medals.

When looking at medals won per $100bn USD in GDP in Rio, Grenada topped the chart. Here, the island nation’s one silver medal (won by Kirani James in the Men’s 400m) meant that they had secured 71.38 medals per $100bn USD GDP. This was followed by Jamaica at 44.62, Bahamas at 21.82 and Georgia at 19.66. Much further down the line was the UK at 2.5, the US at 0.67 and China at 0.36.

The Games are expected to carry a similar price tag to that of the Tokyo games hosted three years ago which cost around $13bn.

On the subject of costings, readers of this month’s WTFX will have seen that since 1960 every single Olympic Games has run over budget by an average of 172% in real terms, according to a paper written by academics at the University of Oxford in 2020 (Prior to Tokyo and Paris therefore). The paper by Bent Flyvbjerg, Alexander Budzier, and Daniel Lunnc also indicated that the Olympic Games represented the greatest level of overspend – relative to budget – across all megaprojects.

It may also be of note that the Paris Olympic Committee have pledged to using 100% renewable energy during the Games and have spent around £1.4bn to clean up the Seine in order for the triathlon to take place there.