Weeks of exciting action
The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are now upon us, with the action having kicked off on Wednesday and the opening ceremony taking place on Friday.
Team USA has won more medals in the Olympics since they began in their current form in 1896 than any other nation, accumulating 2,749 medals, including 1,180 gold.
Team USA doesn’t have as many ultra-dominant athletes this year
Their athletes are always well represented across most sports, giving plenty of chances of success. While Team USA doesn’t have as many ultra-dominant participants this year compared to the era of Michael Phelps when he won 28 medals in five games, they are well-ranked across the board.
To get an insight into how many medals the team might win this time around, VegasSlotsOnline News ran an analysis to see if USA has better results when a Democrat or Republican president is in power.
Crunching the numbers
There’s never a dull moment in US politics, signified by the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the decision by the current President Joe Biden to not run for re-election in November.
Since the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, 21 US Presidents have held power, some having two terms and covering multiple games. Only two presidents during this period weren’t in office during a Summer Olympics.
Donald Trump missed out as the 2020 games were postponed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, while the US boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow due to Cold War tensions, meaning Jimmy Carter didn’t experience one either.
We have discounted the first three Olympics games from our study as not many countries traveled to them, especially the 1904 rendition in St. Louis, Missouri where the US team won 88% of the medals up for grabs.
This left us with eight Democrat presidents presiding during 12 Summer Olympics, which yielded 436 gold medals, 309 silver medals, and 294 bronze medals for a total of 1,039.
A total of 11 Republicans were in charge during the Olympics, presiding during 16 games, winning 1,278 medals, including 476 golds.
What type of President is best?
Of course, the number of events in the Summer Olympics changes from year to year. In 1896, just 43 medals were on offer, while the 2024 iteration will have a record 1,080 medals up for grabs across 32 sports.
we looked at the proportion of medals the team won compared to the total medals up for grabs
When conducting our analysis, we looked at the proportion of medals the team won compared to the total medals up for grabs in that respective games to get a more objective analysis.
When excluding the first three iterations, Republican Presidents had a 17.53% medal rate across all events and an average of 36.9 gold medals compared to 15.06% for Democrats and 39.6 gold medals on average. Therefore, while a Republican president yields more medals, Democrats oversee higher gold medal totals.