Why Do Some Countries Win So Many Olympic Medals?
Wealth, Cold Climates, and the Political Economy of Sporting Success
The 2026 Winter Olympics, held in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo from February 6 to 22, drew significant global attention. The Games were the most-watched Winter Olympics in the United States since 2014, averaging around 23.5 million viewers on NBC and affiliated platforms, a 96 percent increase over Beijing 2022.
On the field, two outcomes stood out. Norway finished at the top of the Winter medal table once again. Italy, as host, recorded one of its strongest Winter performances on record, winning 10 gold, 6 silver, and 14 bronze medals, the most medals the nation has ever achieved in the Winter Olympics.
The results beg two questions that come up every Games: why do the same countries keep winning, and why does hosting help so much?
To answer that, I built statistical models of Olympic medal performance across modern Summer and Winter Games, adjusting for population size and team-event inflation, and incorporating economic, geographic, and climatic variables. I also examine whether national IQ predicts medal performance independently of long-run income.
Data and Sample
Olympic medal data are drawn from the Kaggle dataset, which covers Winter Games through 2014 and Summer Games through 2016. Team events are deduplicated to match official medal counts, and medals are weighted 3–2–1 (Gold–Silver–Bronze). The analysis is restricted to:
Summer Games: 1992–2016
Winter Games: 1994–2014
GDP per capita and population data come from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators. Climate variables are derived from WorldClim global temperature rasters, aggregated to country-level area-weighted means. Mountain share is calculated from global elevation data as the proportion of land area above 1,000 meters. National IQs were obtained from Parra & Kirkegaard, 2025.
All models are negative binomial regressions with log population offsets.
Structural Results
Because the models use a log link, coefficients are reported as incidence rate ratios (IRRs). An IRR expresses the multiplicative change in medal output associated with a one-unit increase in a predictor. An IRR of 2.00 implies medal output doubles; an IRR of 1.50 implies a 50% increase.
In the Winter Olympics, long-run GDP per capita has an IRR of approximately 3.97 (p < 0.001). That magnitude is large: moving from a lower-income to a substantially higher-income country corresponds to nearly quadruple medal output per capita. Winter temperature is also significant (p = 0.028), with warmer climates associated with lower performance. Once income and climate are controlled, mountainous terrain has no independent effect (p = 0.52).
The Summer Olympics show the same economic pattern without the climate effect. Long-run GDP per capita has an IRR of approximately 2.08 (p < 0.001), roughly doubling medal output. Average temperature is not statistically significant (p = 0.22).
Across both seasons, income is the dominant structural predictor. Climate contributes in Winter; hosting produces a temporary boost; mountains largely disappear once income is included. The scale of the GDP coefficient is substantially larger than any other variable in the model.
The figure below summarizes the core relationships: income and medal output in both seasons, the climate gradient in Winter performance, and the host-country boost.
Panel Results: Within vs Between Effects
The structural models pool performance across Games. The panel models instead separate long-run income differences from short-term economic fluctuations within countries.
In the Summer Games (1992–2016), only the long-run income component matters. Countries that are persistently wealthier win more medals. Year-to-year deviations from a country’s income trend have no detectable effect (p = 0.59). Olympic performance in Summer reflects structural capacity, not temporary economic cycles.
The Winter Games (1994–2014) differ. Long-run income remains significant (p = 0.001), but short-term income fluctuations also predict medal output (p = 0.0006). Winter performance appears more responsive to recent economic conditions. This is consistent with the capital-intensive nature of winter sports and the importance of current infrastructure and training investment.
The host-country effect remains strong in both seasons. In the Summer Games, hosting corresponds to an estimated 74% increase in medal output. In Winter, the increase is approximately 43%. Unlike income, however, this effect is temporary rather than structural.
Climate behaves differently across specifications. In the Summer panel model, warmer climates are associated with lower medal output even after controlling for income (p < 0.001). In the Winter panel, colder climates are associated with higher performance, though the effect is marginal in this specification and stronger in the structural aggregation.
The role of national IQ and its mediation through income requires more careful treatment. That analysis follows below.