Winning Medals at the Olympic Games – Does Croatia Have Any Chance?

As the Olympic Games developed and their popularity and relevance grew, winning medals also became important and a matter of national and political prestige. Despite the International Olympic Committee’s refusal to recognize country rankings by medals, the medal table is updated on a regular basis and plays a dominant role in media coverage and public interest (Rathke & Woitek, 2007). This has led researchers to explore the socio-economic, cultural and geographic background of Olympic achievements. The aim of this paper was to review the current state of the research on factors that influence national Olympic Games success. The majority of studies consider variables like: population size, GDP and GDP per capita, hosting or neighbouring country advantage, political system, sports system, health expenditure per capita, climate, etc., as factors that potentially have impact on a country’s medal count. The research has shown that the economic factor, mainly GDP per capita, and political system have a statistically significant influence on the explanation of the numbers of medals won by a certain country at the Olympic Games, but the influence of population size was not confirmed. Keeping in mind the mentioned factors, it is unlikely for Croatia to increase significantly its number of Olympic medals in the future.