Why Are Jamaican Sprinters So Fast? 5 Potential Explanations [Femme FITale #4]

On today’s installation of Femme FITale, we’re taking a look at the fastest women in the world. More specifically, how a small, not particularly wealthy country in the Caribbean managed to take the sprinting world by storm.

Jamaican Excellence

Jamaica is home to around three million people, about the same number as live in Chicago. Although it’s classified as having an upper-middle income economy, Jamaica is still struggling, in part due to slow growth, high debt, and vulnerability to natural disasters.

In 2017, nearly 20% of Jamaicans lived in poverty. Additionally, the country faces relatively high levels of crime and violence (Note: all this according to the World Bank). Jamaica’s murder rate is three times the average of Latin America and the Caribbean, and it’s been considered multiple times to be in the top 10 most dangerous places in the world, particularly for women.

Compare this with the United States. The US has a population of around 328 million (more than 100 times the size of Jamaica) and a significantly lower poverty rate of around 13%. The country is considered to be very safe in most areas and is quite wealthy, with a lot of disposable income floating around.

You would think–purely given this comparison–that the US should dominate Jamaica in running competitions. The US has way more people to choose from and find the top talent, way more money to invest in sporting equipment and practice, and way less crime and poverty that could serve as a distraction/limit on competition.

But that’s not what you see when you look at the data.

Below are the top 10 medaling countries at the Olympic Games in the Women’s 100 meter and 200 meter sprints, ordered by total medals).

Jamaica is only 5 medals behind the US overall, they are nearly tied in silvers, and are even ahead on bronze. It’s incredibly impressive, and completely the opposite of what you’d expect if you just blindly looked at the backgrounds of the two countries.

What about when we look at Jamaica compared with the whole world. How do Jamaican runners stack up then?

Below we see the 100 fastest times for the women’s 100 meter and 200 meter sprints of all time. Note that this data does not only cover the olympics, but considers all major events. Jamaican runners are highlighted in Green.

We can see that Jamaican runners have performed excellently for several decades and that they are having a standout year in 2021. Five of the eleven fastest 100m times in 2021 were Jamaicans (including the two fastest overall), alongside three of the top ten 200m times (including the fastest overall).

In fact, there is only one individual who has performed better than the top Jamaicans: the iconic Florence Griffith-Joyner (Flo-Jo), whose sprint records in the 1980s were so dominant that they have never been topped since.

Jamaican excellence in athletics is relatively unique to sprinting. When looking at other Olympic events, it’s pretty rare to see a Jamaican medal. Jamaicans have only won a total of 87 medals across all sports, meaning that their sprint medals alone make up more than 1/4 of their total winnings.

So what’s going on here? Why does this small country, wrecked by natural disasters, facing horrible crime rates, and lacking tons of money, keep producing so many of the world’s fastest runners–including the fastest women in 2021?

Potential Explanations

There have been a whole host of potential explanations posed for this high performance, including heavy consumption of magical yams and green bananas. In this post, we’ll look at some of the most probable.

1. Track is a much more publicized sport in Jamaica than in other countries.

Beloved by Jamaicans, track is by far the island’s most popular sport. While in the US we have things like the Superbowl and the World Series, in Jamaica their big event is a track competition: The Boys and Girls Championships.

More affectionately known as ‘Champs’, the event takes place in Kingston ever March. It’s a huge spectacle. Five days straight of events–broadcast to national TV–with packed stands of more than 30,000 fans. And pretty much everyone, even if they don’t make it to the event, has a team or runner they’re rooting for.

If you want to be the superstar of your country and compete in front of thousands of fans–you do track. Nothing else really comes close in Jamaica.

And when you have everyone wanting to do a sport, you’ve got a lot more potential to find the fastest runners. Pretty much everyone wanting to be someone in athletics will try it, so you’re a lot less likely to miss the best runners because they went to other sports than you would be in other countries.

Look at the two fastest Jamaican women in the world: Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Elaine Thompson-Herah. Both competed at champs in their early days,

2. The small size of Jamaica makes it easier to find superstars.

Jamaica is a pretty small country–only 3 million or so inhabitants, only a portion of whom are young and athletic enough to be potential future stars. This means the pool of athletes is relatively small.

While this could be considered a downside–fewer athletes to choose from–I think it’s also an upside in its own way. In a small group, it’s much easier to find the best athletes. You need a lot fewer eyes looking and are less likely to miss someone. This is especially true when linked to point #1. You only really need one person to spot your running talent in Jamaica since the love of track means that everyone wants to find the best stars.

3. Greatness is a self-perpetuating cycle.

Role models play a key role in the development of great athletes. Consider a 2021 study focusing on the effects of role models in changing the self-efficacy adolescent athletes.

This study, conducted by researchers at Seoul National University in South Korea, found that when adolescent athletes have role models that they model their behavior after, they appear to–on average–have higher self efficacy. Higher self efficacy, an individual’s belief in their own capacity to succeed based on their skills, in turn seems to lead to increased ability of young athletes to achieve a flow state (being “in the zone”). Although statistical analyses always involve some amount of uncertainty, the researchers calculated that there was a less than 1% probability that their results were purely due to random chance.

According to the science, when young athletes have accomplished role models, they tend to perform better. And in a place like Jamaica, those role models are easy to come by. The fastest man in the world–Usain Bolt–is from there, alongside many of the top fastest women of all time!

When you come from the same country as those legends, it’s not so far fetched to believe that you can be just like them.

This becomes more and more powerful over time, too. The more Jamaican sprinters that dominate international competitions and break records, the more that young Jamaicans will think they can do the same. When there’s only one top sprinter, they can seem like an anomaly–but when there are dozens, you start to realize that the goal of getting up there with them is not impossible.

4. Jamaica has some of the best coaches in the world.

Coaching may play a big role too. Jamaica is known for having some of the top coaches in the world, which could help give the country’s athletes an edge.

Prior to 1999–before Jamaica made a name for itself in sprinting–Jamaican runners were not trained in their home country, but rather were sent to the United States for training. Jamaica slowly started to make a switch toward home-training, though, and sprinters kept doing better and better.

The first home-trained sprinter to find international success was Brigitte Foster (now Foster-Hylton) in 2003. She was followed by many more Jamaican-trained athletes: Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, and Melaine Walker.

This switch proved successful for a few reasons. For one, it meant that sprinters had no chance of getting caught up in the US college system and being neglected or becoming more interested in college life than being the fastest in the world. But perhaps more importantly, Jamaica had fantastic coaches that kept pushing their athletes.

Again, we have the small country conundrum. How does this small island seem to magically have such great track coaches? One potential explanation is their focus on coaching training.

Even though it’s a small island, Jamaica has a dedicated college designed to train coaches: The GC Foster College of Physical Education and Sport. In a country where poverty and violence play a big role, coaching is a way to do something to escape that, and a dedicated program means lots of opportunity to develop skilled coaches.

5. Running is a way to escape poverty and violence.

In a place like Jamaica, with high poverty and crime rates, it can be difficult to break out of the cycle and escape a difficult way of life. There are not all that many great opportunities in the country.

Running, however, has proven to be an effective way to escape poverty–at least for the best athletes.

Consider the story of Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. She grew up in a one room building with no dining table. Some nights, all she ate was a little bit of bread and butter. Her family couldn’t afford all the groceries they needed, so they relied on a kind grocery store operator to be generous and help them.

She now has a net worth of around $4 million. And she’s not alone. Look up pretty much any top Jamaican runner and you’ll likely see a similar story.

If you can be one of the fastest runners in the world and impress fans on a world stage, it can be the break you need to escape a difficult life. This is a big reason why so many young runners train–and train hard. They want a way out. And they know that with hard work and a little luck, it’s not impossible.

Takeaways

So there we have it. Five potential reasons why Jamaican sprinters are so good. If you came into this with any knowledge of running, though, you might be a little confused. Why did genetics not show up on this list, when we know they play a big role in distance running?

Although “genetics” has been discussed many times as a potential explanation, it’s not backed up by evidence. If we compare Jamaican runners to black runners from the US–who tend to be their biggest competition–we don’t find any significant differences in their prevalence of so-called “performance” genes.

It mostly seems to be a combination of internal motivation, national culture, and good infrastructure for finding potential superstars that has led to Jamaica’s success.

The small island nation cracked the formula, and have cemented a permanent place in sprinting history.

What Makes A Great Workout Song? – A Spotify Deep Dive

This week, we’re taking a deep dive into one of my favorite things: music.

Like a lot of people, music is a big part of my fitness journey. I have multiple workout playlists on Spotify and always listen to one when I’m at the gym. If I forget headphones and have to go without music that day, I never perform my best.

Even though workout music is important to me, I’ve never been able to master the art of playlist design. My playlists just tend to be my favorite upbeat songs at the time. They are all over the place musically and thematically, which can sometimes be a little bit jarring.

So in my journey to create the ultimate workout playlist, I decided I needed to look beyond just myself–tracking down some of the most popular workout playlists right now in an effort to answer the question: “What makes a great workout song?”

Naturally, I turned to data for my answer.

Luckily for me, Spotify, one of the most popular streaming services around the world–and my music platform of choice–makes a lot of its data publicly available through an API.

So I connected to it and began to investigate.

To make sure things were data-centric, I focused only on playlists created by Spotify. Since their platform design is based around machine-learning, it seemed probable that Spotify’s playlists were likely more data-informed than standard users’ playlists, and therefore more likely to contain the “best” songs. Additionally, Spotify-created playlists were significantly easier to search and access through the API.

So here’s what I found: the best workout songs of 2021, according to Spotify.

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Spotify collects data on quite a few different numeric values for each song on their platform. For the purposes of this analysis, I focused on the following:

• Valence (A measure of a song’s “happiness” level)
• Energy (On a scale of 0 to 1)
• Loudness (although Spotify normalizes the audio of their tracks to keep them at relatively consistent levels, there is still some variation)
• Danceability (On a scale of 0 to 1)
• Tempo (Beats Per Minute/BPM)
• Track age in years (Spotify’s raw data includes the release date, which was used to calculate this field)

If you want to learn more about these metrics, you can check out the Spotify API documentation here, though it is important to note that I did not pull the information straight through the API, but rather through an interface in the spotifyr software package.

In an effort to understand what sets a song apart as a great “Workout” song, enough for Spotify to include in their workout-specific playlists, I wanted see how Workout music looks in comparison to other genres across these different variables.

To do this, I selected a handful of genres and compared them using the metrics defined previously. The six genres I used were Workout, Rock, Pop, Indie, Hip Hop, and EDM/Dance music.

We can see the results of this analysis in the gallery below. Each graph shows the distributions of each of our variables of interest for our six selected genres of choice. To get a sense of the “standard” workout song, I also calculated the median values–representing the midline, where 50% of songs fall above and 50% fall below–for each distribution, illustrated by a vertical black line.

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According to this analysis, the songs that Spotify has highlighted as great workout music seem to be distinct from our other genres. What sets them apart?

Let’s consider valence first. Compared with other genres, workout music seems to be pretty middle of the road on the happiness scale. There are a higher proportion of happy workout songs than EDM and dance songs, but a lower proportion than indie and hip hop. However, the happiness level of workout songs can vary dramatically. Some songs rate very low on the happiness scale, while others rate very high.

Energy is also quite interesting. Workout songs tend to be quite high energy compared with other genres, matching up pretty well with the energy of rock music and EDM/dance music. They are typically a lot more energetic than pop, indie, or hip hop songs. And this makes sense when we think about the purpose of workout music–to keep you motivated and working hard during a workout! Low energy, “chill” songs would likely not be all that productive.

Given that, you might be wondering why there’s a low energy bump for the workout category. It turns out that the low energy songs belong to a yoga-specific playlist, which is classified by Spotify in the same way that songs for a standard gym playlist would be.

What about loudness? Just like with energy, workout music is at the top. Workout songs have the highest median loudness of any of our genres, with some standout low yoga songs once again.

For danceability, workout music is no longer at the top. Workout songs tend to be moderately danceable–more than rock and indie, but less than hip hop. Workout music does appear to have the highest danceability range of any of the genres, though. There does not appear to be a clear danceability number shared by workout songs.

What about tempo? For this measure, workout songs seem to be pretty average, hovering around a median tempo of 125 BPM. They seem to share the same peak density as EDM/Dance songs and are faster than a lot of hip hop songs.

As for track length, once again, nothing stands out all that much. Workout songs tend to hover around a median track length of about 200 seconds (a little over three minutes), which is a little shorter than rock and indie songs and similar to pop and EDM music. Additionally, a much lower proportion of songs are over 5 minutes (300 seconds) for the workout genre compared with other genres.

Finally, song age. This metric produced one of the more interesting graphs, with the distributions for the genres looking dramatically different. Workout music was again relatively middle of the road–with a median song age of around 2 years. Workout songs did tend to be a little bit older than the songs on EDM, hip hop, or pop playlists–but what stood out most to me was just how much newer they were than the songs on rock and indie playlists, which both had median ages of over a decade old!

So what does this tell us about the perfect workout song–according to Spotify? If we’re looking just at median values, it looks like the ideal workout song is:

• Moderately happy
• High energy
• Quite loud
• Pretty danceable
• About 125 BPM
• A little over 3 minutes long
• A couple of years old

However, not all workout songs have to look exactly the same and be carbon copies on these different metrics. In fact, to create a great playlist of multiple good workout songs, there should be some variety, with some songs higher energy than others, a mix of song lengths, and variation in danceability.

To see what this mix might look like, let’s look at the top 5 workout songs by overall popularity (which Spotify classifies as popularity relative to similar music, not all music in general).

The most popular workout songs on Spotify’s playlists as of August 2021 are listed below, alongside links to their music videos if you’re curious:

• Bad Habits – Ed Sheeran [Watch]
• I WANNA BE YOUR SLAVE – Måneskin [Watch]
• INDUSTRY BABY (feat. Jack Harlow) – Lil Nas X [Watch]
• STAY (with Justin Bieber) – The Kid LAROI [Watch]
• Yonaguni – Bad Bunny [Watch]

If we look at these in terms of their relative values for those metrics we mentioned previously, we see that the songs are quite mixed in their features.

For example, Bad Habits is the most danceable song by far, but also has the slowest tempo and the longest duration. Industry Baby is quieter than the other songs, but on the happier end. STAY is not very danceable, and the shortest song of the bunch, but it has a pretty high tempo and higher energy than most of the other songs.

This graph makes it clear that there’s no one formula for what makes a top workout song. No two workout songs are identical and they all trade off in terms of different features.

To build a great workout playlist, it looks like we want a mix of songs that fall generally near our median metrics, though there is some flexibility.

For fun, let’s explore a few other variables. First up, explicitness. An explicit rating means that a song contains curse words and/or sexual, violent, or offensive content. Typically, musicians are expected to tag their own music for explicitness, so this can be subjective. However, if the streaming platform a song is hosted on determines that a song is explicit and it has not been marked as such, it can result in penalties for that artist, such as their music being made invisible to listeners. As a result, most musicians are inclined to review their songs carefully and provide accurate ratings.

When we look at explicitness, we once again find workout songs in the middle. A little over 20% of workout songs are tagged as explicit–significantly more than indie, EDM, or rock, but less than pop and much less than hip hop.

What about song title? Can we glean anything from the titles of workout songs? Are there any clear themes across them?

Below we have a word cloud of the most common words that appeared in the titles of the songs on Spotify’s curated workout playlists. Word clouds aren’t the most scientifically useful, but they do provide us a quick visual glance at what’s going on.

The one word that stands out the most here is “feat”, a shortened term for the word “featuring”, which indicates that one artist has brought in another artist for a guest appearance on their track. Workout playlists seem to have a lot of songs with guest artists, rather than songs done by one individual or group.

So there we have it: a look at what makes a great workout song. Since the “perfect” workout song is quite a subjective measure, I’m curious: What’s your favorite workout song? What features make a workout song great for you? Did you find anything interesting in this article that changed your view of workout music?

And if you want to check out some of the songs analyzed for this project, here are a few of Spotify’s top workout playlists:

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For more posts like this, check out the Data Analysis category on the blog!

If you liked this, and want me to continue doing more posts about workout music, let me know what type of work and analysis you’d like to see!

Ronda Rousey and the Rise of Women’s MMA [Femme FITale #3]

Mixed martial arts (MMA)–a combat sport combining techniques from a variety of disciplines such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Kickboxing, and Wrestling–was a men’s game until the 2010s, when its fate was forever changed by “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey, the women’s MMA superstar whose career ushered in a new era of combat sports.

Rousey’s career did not start in MMA, though. She grew up competing in Judo, performing well enough to get a spot in the 2004 Athens Olympic Games as the youngest athlete in her sport, and following in the footsteps of her mother–AnnMaria De Mars–who was the first American to win a gold medal at the World Judo Championships.

After her impressive 2008 achievement of becoming the first American to win an Olympic medal in women’s judo, Rousey decided to leave the sport in favor of MMA and began training in a variety of martial arts disciplines.

At the time, women were only competing in amateur leagues or in smaller MMA professional organizations–like Strikeforce–but were left out of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC): the heavyweights of televised pay-per-view MMA.

That all changed in November 2012 when Ronda Rousey became the first female fighter to sign with the UFC, a moment which set off a chain of events that finally brought women’s MMA into the spotlight.

Viewers began to tune into women’s fights and the UFC began to schedule more and more, reaching a peak of nearly 100 women’s fights in 2019-2020, a dramatic increase from the mere handful held in 2012-2013, after Rousey’s signing. Although women’s fights still make up a minority of UFC’s schedule, they are incredibly popular, with some headline fights viewed by millions around the world.

Rousey did not have to compete in a lot of fights to have a big impact. She only fought eight times over her four year tenure for a total of less than 30 minutes in the octagon, but she did more for her sport in those 30 minutes than many athletes will do for theirs in a lifetime.

Rousey destroyed her competition for six fights in a row, utilizing her judo skills to take out her opponents quickly with arm-bar submissions and the crowd loved the show, quickly growing interested in watching more women’s fights. Five of her six victories were incredibly dominant, lasting only one round, with two of them (versus Alexis Davis and Cat Zingano) taking fewer than 20 seconds each from start to finish.

However, Rousey’s winning streak didn’t last forever. Her UFC career ended abruptly and, as many fans would argue–in flames–after she attempted to take on Holly Holm, a much more experienced striker, and Amanda Nunes, one of the greatest fighters to touch women’s MMA, looking greatly outclassed in both fights. With no chance of getting her champion title back, Rousey retired from the sport soon after.

What made Rousey so dominant early on, and what failed her versus Holm and Nunes?

Below we look at a table of Rousey’s stats from her eight fights (with the exception of the 2015 bout versus Cat Zingano, for which the data was not available). Each number represents the proportion of attempts of each particular move that Rousey landed successfully: significant strikes, total strikes, takedowns, strikes to the head/body/leg, strikes from distance, strikes from clinch position, and strikes from the ground. Each number is colored according to the percentile that it falls into relative to measures of each statistic across all women’s UFC fights, with darker colors representing higher level performance. For example, in all of her victorious fights, Rousey’s proportion of successful body strikes was in the top 25% of all female fighters from all bouts in UFC history.

Rousey’s success in her early days was characterized by incredibly high success rates in many areas (significant strikes, total strikes, takedowns, head strikes, and body strikes). Rousey performed poorly at strikes from distance, but her takedown and grappling skills were enough to get her through with relative ease.

However, most of Rousey’s opponents early on were not particularly advanced strikers, and their lack of skill in that particular field gave Rousey the opportunity to put in a lot of successful hits. When Rousey finally fought against a strong striker in Holly Holm, it was all over for her. Holm easily handled Rousey with her superior striking power, taking her out with a powerful kick to the head and leaving Rousey with her worst ever performance–in the bottom 25% for most metrics, and in the bottom half for the rest. Although she did a little better statistically versus Amanda Nunes, Rousey couldn’t keep up with the never-ending barrage of right hand punches.

[Image: Proportion of Rousey’s strikes that were successful, colored by percentile relative to ALL women’s UFC fights: Significant Strikes, Total Strikes, Takedowns, Strikes to the Head / Body / Leg, Strikes from Distances, Strikes from Clinch Position, and Strikes from Ground Position]

Although Rousey may have lost badly to Holm and Nunes and hurt her reputation pretty severely in the process, across her career she was still an above average fighter overall in the UFC, performing in the top half for most metrics, and she definitely earned her place in fighting history.

How do you think Rousey ranks? Was she a great fighter, despite her sudden and dramatic downfall? I certainly think a case could be made.

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Data: https://www.kaggle.com/rajeevw/ufcdata

Who Are The Best Female Gymnasts of All Time? [Femme FITale #1]

In light of the 2020 (2021) Tokyo Olympic Games officially kicking off, I’ve got a bonus post today–the first in my new series: Femme FITale –– focused on recognizing women who have made a big impact in the fitness world (be it through competition, research, or business and entrepreneurship). 

For this installment, I’ll be focusing on the women of Olympic gymnastics––one of my favorite sports to watch (and one of the best parts of the Olympics!).

First, a quick history lesson. Women’s Artistic Gymnastics first became an olympic sport in 1928. There was only one event that year: the all-around team competition. It was not until 1936 that the games began to look more like they do today, with the individual all-around, balance beam, uneven bars, and vault events added to the schedule. The modern competition set was then finalized in 1952 with the addition of the floor routine. 

Since its inception in 1928, Women’s Olympic Gymnastics has been dominated by a small group of countries, with 10 teams taking home more than 90% of the medals.

Great Britain dominated the medal count in the early days but declined over time, the Soviet Union took over with a period of gold medal domination from 1952 to 1986 (performing worse, but still well, when it became Russia), and the United States and Romania medaled frequently, taking turns with each other and with Russia at the top of the medal count for several decades.

The Soviet Union’s run was one for the ages, with the team showing utter dominance throughout its reign. Even though the Soviet Union was only competing for just over three decades, they won 9 gold medals in the all-around––three times what the next two closest teams (The United States and Romania) have ever won after competing for around twice as many years.

Romania and the United States were bested by the Soviet Union in the race for all-around gold, but both countries have been dominant in their own right, taking quite a few silver and bronze medals––and together, nearly as many medals as all the other countries (except the Soviet Union) combined.  Romania has medaled in the team all around competition in 12 different Olympic games, followed closely by the United States at 9 games.

There has been clear dominance by the top three countries (The Soviet Union / Russia, The United States, and Romania) at the team level, but what about at the individual level?

Several gymnasts stand out for excellence against their competition–and they all come from the most competitive countries. In the table below, we see a list of the top 10 performing gymnasts who competed in a minimum of four Olympic gymnastics events throughout their careers, ordered by their medaling rate (total number of medals won / total number of events competed in). Each gymnast’s win rate (total golds / total events) is also included, alongside the percentiles of these rates compared with all other gymnasts who earned at least one medal in their respective category (at least one gold/silver/bronze for the medal rate percentile and at least one gold for the win rate percentile). Note that only 22% of competitors ever medaled in their Olympic careers, and only 9% won a gold. Non-medalists are excluded from percentile calculations to introduce a clearer spread between the best and the runners up.

So who are the best female Olympic gymnasts of all time, you might ask? It depends on the metric you look at.

Based on the data available through 2016 (the standings will likely change with the final results from Tokyo), a case could be made for Nastia Liukin, Marlya Kindrativna Horokhovska, Viorica Daniela Siliva in terms of medal rate. All three gymnasts medaled in all events they competed in, and each won at least one gold.
If win rate is more important than medal rate, however, different gymnasts stand out. Ecaterina Szabo and Simone Biles have the two highest win rates, each winning an impressive 67% (4 out of 6) of their events. 

There is no one answer, but if I had to put in my own two cents, I (and probably most others today) would  go for Simone Biles, who recently completed a vault so difficult (and theoretically all-time-high-scoring) and dangerous that judges limited its point value, likely to discourage others from trying it and injuring themselves.

Biles has already had an incredibly impressive career, and I can’t wait to see how the rest of it plays out (Go team USA!!).

Who do you think is the best of all time? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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For more posts on women crushing it in sports, see the Femme FITale collection.

Who Are The Best Female Gymnasts of All Time? [Femme FITale #1]

In light of the 2020 (2021) Tokyo Olympic Games officially kicking off, I’ve got a bonus post today–the first in my new series: Femme FITale –– focused on recognizing women who have made a big impact in the fitness world (be it through competition, research, or business and entrepreneurship). 

For this installment, I’ll be focusing on the women of Olympic gymnastics––one of my favorite sports to watch (and one of the best parts of the Olympics!).

First, a quick history lesson. Women’s Artistic Gymnastics first became an olympic sport in 1928. There was only one event that year: the all-around team competition. It was not until 1936 that the games began to look more like they do today, with the individual all-around, balance beam, uneven bars, and vault events added to the schedule. The modern competition set was then finalized in 1952 with the addition of the floor routine. 

Since its inception in 1928, Women’s Olympic Gymnastics has been dominated by a small group of countries, with 10 teams taking home more than 90% of the medals.

Great Britain dominated the medal count in the early days but declined over time, the Soviet Union took over with a period of gold medal domination from 1952 to 1986 (performing worse, but still well, when it became Russia), and the United States and Romania medaled frequently, taking turns with each other and with Russia at the top of the medal count for several decades.

The Soviet Union’s run was one for the ages, with the team showing utter dominance throughout its reign. Even though the Soviet Union was only competing for just over three decades, they won 9 gold medals in the all-around––three times what the next two closest teams (The United States and Romania) have ever won after competing for around twice as many years.

Romania and the United States were bested by the Soviet Union in the race for all-around gold, but both countries have been dominant in their own right, taking quite a few silver and bronze medals––and together, nearly as many medals as all the other countries (except the Soviet Union) combined.  Romania has medaled in the team all around competition in 12 different Olympic games, followed closely by the United States at 9 games.

There has been clear dominance by the top three countries (The Soviet Union / Russia, The United States, and Romania) at the team level, but what about at the individual level?

Several gymnasts stand out for excellence against their competition–and they all come from the most competitive countries. In the table below, we see a list of the top 10 performing gymnasts who competed in a minimum of four Olympic gymnastics events throughout their careers, ordered by their medaling rate (total number of medals won / total number of events competed in). Each gymnast’s win rate (total golds / total events) is also included, alongside the percentiles of these rates compared with all other gymnasts who earned at least one medal in their respective category (at least one gold/silver/bronze for the medal rate percentile and at least one gold for the win rate percentile). Note that only 22% of competitors ever medaled in their Olympic careers, and only 9% won a gold. Non-medalists are excluded from percentile calculations to introduce a clearer spread between the best and the runners up.

So who are the best female Olympic gymnasts of all time, you might ask? It depends on the metric you look at.

Based on the data available through 2016 (the standings will likely change with the final results from Tokyo), a case could be made for Nastia Liukin, Marlya Kindrativna Horokhovska, Viorica Daniela Siliva in terms of medal rate. All three gymnasts medaled in all events they competed in, and each won at least one gold.
If win rate is more important than medal rate, however, different gymnasts stand out. Ecaterina Szabo and Simone Biles have the two highest win rates, each winning an impressive 67% (4 out of 6) of their events. 

There is no one answer, but if I had to put in my own two cents, I (and probably most others today) would  go for Simone Biles, who recently completed a vault so difficult (and theoretically all-time-high-scoring) and dangerous that judges limited its point value, likely to discourage others from trying it and injuring themselves.

Biles has already had an incredibly impressive career, and I can’t wait to see how the rest of it plays out (Go team USA!!).

Who do you think is the best of all time? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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For more posts on women crushing it in sports, see the Femme FITale collection.