For a new world ranking of countries in elite sport—correlation between competition level and bibliometrics in Olympic sports

Introduction The Olympics remain today the largest multidisciplinary sports competition in the world, and the Olympic Medal Table has been dogmatically followed by media, scholars, and sports administrators, as the mainstream measurement of the countries’ success in elite sport. Methods Since 2018, the Olympic Medal Table has been challenged by a global sport scientific index, the World Ranking of Countries in Elite Sport (WRCES), which provided, for the first time, a research-based measurement of the performance of all the countries having National Olympic Committees. The main characteristics of the WRCES is a weighting of each sport determining its level of competition. This coefficient is the sum of two variables, one related to the universality and the other to the global media popularity of each sport. In this paper, correlations calculi, using Pearson R coefficient of correlation along with the corresponding P value, will be conducted between the number of citations, number of articles, WRCES level of competition and the number of medals of each Olympic sport. Results There is a strong correlation between the number of scientific citations (R = 0.74; p < 0.001) or articles (R = 0.70; p < 0.001) and the competition level determined by the WRCES while no relationship was found with the number of medals available at the Summer Olympics. Discussion Overall, the present study confirms the relevance of the WRCES and adds an argument to contest the rationality of the Olympic Medal program.

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