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The Best Are Always the Best: COVID-19 Lockdown Stringency and the Dispersion of Olympic Medal Outcomes

Fernando Delbianco, Federico Fioravanti, Fernando Tohmé

arXiv 17 Aug 2026 · Econometrics

arXiv:2608.16325 · PDF · Extracted main text

Abstract

We ask whether COVID-19 lockdown stringency altered national Olympic performance between Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020, using the Oxford Stringency Index and the 99 countries that won a medal in either edition. As in \citet{liu2024}, mean performance is unaffected: stringency is insignificant in every OLS and ANOVA specification. The distribution is not. Among the 84 non-traditionally dominant nations, medal changes are three to six times more dispersed in high-stringency countries; the difference is absent among dominant nations and concentrated in men's events. A common shock left the competitive hierarchy intact while sharply raising outcome uncertainty for smaller Olympic teams.

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Liu, Xuepeng and Ornelas, Emanuel and Shi, Huimin (2024) Was COVID-19 a Game Changer for the Tokyo and Beijing Olympics?0.92844100%
2Baimbridge, Mark (1998) Outcome Uncertainty in Sporting Competition: The Olympic Games 1896–19960.73732100%
3Kufenko, Vadim and Geloso, Vincent (2021) Who Are the Champions? Inequality, Economic Freedom and the Olympics0.64422100%
4Schlembach, Christoph and Schmidt, Sascha L. and Schreyer, Dominik a… (2022) Forecasting the Olympic Medal Distribution–-A Socioeconomic Machine Learning Model0.64422100%
5Fernando Delbianco and Federico Fioravanti and Fernando Tohmé (2023) Home Advantage and Crowd Attendance: Evidence from Rugby During the Covid 19 Pandemic self0.40511100%
6Abadie, Alberto (2020) Statistical Nonsignificance in Empirical Economics0.40511100%
7Alon, Titan and Doepke, Matthias and Olmstead-Rumsey, Jane and Terti… (2020) The Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Equality0.40511100%
8Berdahl, Jennifer L. and Uhlmann, Eric Luis and Bai, Feng (2015) Win-Win: Female and Male Athletes from More Gender Equal Nations Perform Better in International Sports Competitions0.40511100%
9Bernard, Andrew B. and Busse, Meghan R (2004) Who Wins the Olympic Games: Economic Resources and Medal Totals0.40511100%
10Csurilla, Gergely and Fert o, Imre (2022) How Long Does a Medal Win Last? Survival Analysis of the Duration of Olympic Success0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 25 scored citations.