The Olympic Stream

In the build-up to the Olympics 2012 in London, MO.be published a dossier about the Olympic Games (in dutch). Part of this dossier is the Olympic Stream, a visualisation of all medals won in modern Olympics.

 Datasource: The Guardian, Visualization: MO*

All medals won in the Olympics are represented chronologically, from the Games in Athens in 1896 on the left to the last Olympics in Beijing in 2008 on the right. The thickness of the ‘stream’ of the country indicates the number of medals won and colors indicate the contintent or region of a country. Country names are shown when hovering over the graph.

The graph shows, amongst other things,

• the boycott of the Games by the United States in 1980 and by the Sovjet Union in 1984.
• the internationalisation of the Games starting in the 1980’s, with a more divers range of countries winning medals
• the home advantage for host countries, who manage to grab more medals then in other editions of the Games.