SLEEPING TIGER, FLYING DRAGON !~!

"HOW does India compare with Australia?" In India, the media and the public frequently debate this topic. Unfortunately, such discussions seldom go beyond cricket (a game in which up to 22 players do different things to a ball at different points of time... it usually continues for about a month until the Aussies are declared the winners).
Let me give you a comparison between India and Australia that has nothing to do with cricket, but is nevertheless exciting. In the 2002 Commonwealth Games held in Manchester (U.K.), Australia won 144 gold/silver medals. India bagged a third as many — 52 gold/silver medals — twenty of which were Commonwealth records (Table I). India was thus placed in the fourth position behind Australia, the U.K. and Canada.
Here is another comparison that is not exciting at all. Australia successfully converted its Commonwealth glory into Olympic medals (see Figure A). Its combined tally in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 was an impressive 107 medals. India did not win a third as many as the Aussies this time — it only managed one bronze in Sydney and one silver in Athens. Although twenty Commonwealth records were set in 2002 (Table I), only Rathore got a silver medal in Athens.

It might be a bit unfair to compare India and Australia — the Australians are crazy about sports, enjoy better training and infrastructure, and also had the home crowd advantage in Sydney (where they bagged 9 more medals than in Athens). So let us look at a different country, say Jamaica. India fared five times better than Jamaica in the 2002 Commonwealth Games, but Jamaica fared five times better than India in Sydney and in Athens... how strange!

India also put up a commendable performance in the 2002 Asian Games held in Busan (Korea). It won 23 gold/silver medals compared to Iran's 22. India actually fared better with 11 gold medals compared to Iran's 8. What is Iran's combined tally in Sydney and Athens? 10 medals. And India's tally? 2 medals.
Maybe Iran has better facilities. After all, its GDP per capita is $7000 (ppp-adjusted) as opposed to $3000 for India. So let us choose a large Asian country, say Indonesia, whose GDP per capita is similar to India. Indonesia only won 4 gold and 7 silver medals in Busan, as opposed to India's 11 gold and 12 silver medals. However, Indonesia bagged a total of 10 medals in Sydney and Athens.

Where did India's Asiad gold and silver medallists go? As P.T. Usha wonders: "Does that mean our athletes were content after reaching the finals and lost the fire within them to do better?"
The number of gold/silver medals won by a country in the Asiad/Commonwealth Games is a good indicator of how well it would perform in the Olympics. The logic is that you at least need to have won a silver medal in the regional games to have a chance of winning an Olympic medal. This, by the way, is factually accurate — countries that did not even win a silver in the 2002 Games drew a blank in Sydney as well as in Athens.
Figure C shows the performance of all the countries which participated in the 2002 Asiad/Commonwealth Games. We see that most countries bagged an Olympic medal in Sydney or in Athens for every two gold/silver medals (2.2 to be precise) won in the 2002 Games. If we ignore the major exceptions, namely Australia and India, this correlation has a coefficient of 0.98 (a `perfect correlation' would have a value of 1) — which is actually good, given that the different games are not strictly comparable.

On the basis of this correlation, India (which won 52 gold/silver medals in the 2002 Commonwealth Games) would be expected to win 23-24 medals in Sydney and Athens (combined). In other words, 11-12 medals for India in Athens — not just the lone silver that it actually managed.


Interestingly, our analysis agrees well with the prediction of at least 10 medals for India in Athens by the consulting firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PWC). The PWC study analysed how medal performance in Sydney was related to economic and political factors, and included data from the four Olympic Games since 1988 in order to produce some benchmarks against which performance in Athens could be judged.