All the Paris Olympics medals won by South-East Europe, in data
Water polo, combat sports, and men tended to dominate. But the data on the Paris Olympics also indicates some curious cases, from the Romanian female rowing team to Turkey's female athletes, as well as stories of migration.
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Looking at the map of the European regions where athletes who won medals at the Paris Olympics were born, there is one region that is particularly surprising. While many of the athletes come from big cities such as Paris itself, London or Barcelona, or from small, densely populated countries like the Netherlands, or from many of the richest regions of various countries, from Catalonia to Lombardy, there is a curious concentration of medallists in the north-eastern corner of Romania. This is one of the poorest regions in the entire European Union.
Almost all the Romanian athletes who excelled at rowing in this year’s Olympics come from an archipelago of small towns in that region of the country, the Suceava district in particular. Romania has traditionally been highly competitive in women’s rowing: over the last fifty years, with the exception of just one Olympic games, its athletes have always finished on the Olympic podium in at least one of the discipline’s specialties.
Where the medal winners are from
Overall, many of the most impressive European regions at this year’s Olympics are in south-eastern Europe, as well as some of the most disappointing regions.
In addition to North-Eastern Romania, Dalmatia and Zagreb stand out with more than nine medallists per million inhabitants. They lead the ranking of European regions in terms of medallists per capita, mainly but not exclusively due to the silver medal won by the Croatian men’s water polo team. In per capita terms, the Belgrade region also achieved an excellent result, making it the region in Europe with the most gold medal winners relative to its population size.
The sporting successes of these regions stand out even more when we compare the number of medallists born in each European region with the level of wealth, measured by GDP. Additional Serbian regions also stand out in this respect: Vojvodina, Šumadija and Western Serbia, Montenegro and the Greek region of the Northern Aegean. The range of disciplines and Olympic competitions that have produced these results is actually quite limited: the medals are mainly concentrated in basketball, rowing and men’s water polo.
Among the European regions with the most disappointing results are Bosnia Herzegovina and North Macedonia, which are among the few European countries not to have won a single medal at the Paris Olympics. The Romanian region of South-Muntenia, as well as the Lisbon area, are the most populous of the European regions that were not home to a single medallist. The regions of Rome, Bucharest, Athens and Istanbul also achieved far fewer medals than could have been expected, given their sizable populations. Despite being a relatively rich and densely populated region, even Transylvania did not bring home any medals from Paris.
Gender imbalance
In total, 142 athletes who were born in south-eastern Europe or competed for countries from that region won medals at the Paris Olympics, including 48 gold medals. Virtually all of these olympians won a single medal – as was the case with the most famous of the region’s athletes, Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic. Apart from Ukrainian sabre fencer Olha Kharlan, the exceptions were all Romanians: Simona Radiș, Ioana Vrinceanu, Ancuța Bodnar and Roxana Anghel, each of whom won in both the eight-man and two-man rowing competitions, while swimmer David Popovici won medals in both the 100m and 200m freestyle.
Scrolling through the names reveals a certain gender imbalance: two thirds of the medallists from South-Eastern Europe are men. The achievements of male athletes clearly outnumber those of female athletes in almost all countries in the region. In the cases of Albania and the Caucasus, every single Olympic medal in Paris was won by a man, mostly in combat sports.
In fact, combat sports are the Olympic disciplines in which south-east European countries won the most medals as a whole. Between wrestling, judo, boxing and taekwondo, athletes from the region finished on the podium at the end of no less than 34 fights at this year’s Olympics. Notably, Turkish athletes in these disciplines won most of the medals taken home by their country in Paris.
Athletes who cross borders
Looking at the birthplaces of athletes who won medals at this year’s Olympics, some family stories of emigration emerge, such as those of two athletes born in Ukraine who emigrated to Israel as children, or Bulgarian weightlifter Karlos Nasar, born in Paris to a mixed couple. There are Serbian athletes born in Croatia, Montenegro and England, and Croatian athletes born in Austria.
Wrestlers from the Caucasus are the group of medallists from south-eastern Europe who have crossed national borders more than any other. No fewer than eight of the athletes who won medals in wrestling, taekwondo and judo were born in the Russian republics of Dagestan or North Ossetia, but competed for other European countries. Among these are Islam Dudaev and Chermen Valiev, who gave Albania its first ever Olympic medals.
Among the European countries that have benefited the most from athletes born elsewhere are Azerbaijan and Bulgaria. Both countries won seven medals at the Paris Olympics, but almost all of these victories were achieved by athletes born in other countries, including Georgia, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, and even Cuba.
