Why did Indonesia lose? A socio-economic reflection

SEA Games is finish and Indonesia lost.

In the past the sport authority will quickly point to home advantage of the host as defence. But they could not do that this time, since loosing no longer mean becoming number two (1985 and 1995) or three (1999, 2001 and 2003). Not only Indonesia got less than half of Philippine’s gold medal, we also gave the worst performances ever since Indonesia joined the games in 1977. To ranked number five in a ten countries club is not something to be proud of, even more so since that Indonesia's population account for almost half of ASEAN population.

But why so much fuss about a sport event? There is a long history of mixing sport with diplomacy and national prestige. German used the Olympic Games in 1936 as an opportunity to promote their Nazi ideology and superiority of Aryan race. During cold war USA and Soviet Union used medal tally in Olympic Games as prove of supremacy of their economics system. Indonesia initiated and hosted Games of New Emerging Forcer (Ganefo) as a display of fighting sprit and solidarity among developing countries against imperialism and colonialism

EA Games is finish and Indonesia lost.In the past the sport authority will quickly point to home advantage of the host as defence. But they could not do that this time, since loosing no longer mean becoming number two (1985 and 1995) or three (1999, 2001 and 2003). Not only Indonesia got less than half of Philippine’s gold medal, we also gave the worst performances ever since Indonesia joined the games in 1977. To ranked number five in a ten countries club is not something to be proud of, even more so since that Indonesia's population account for almost half of ASEAN population.

But why so much fuss about a sport event? There is a long history of mixing sport with diplomacy and national prestige. German used the Olympic Games in 1936 as an opportunity to promote their Nazi ideology and superiority of Aryan race. During cold war USA and Soviet Union used medal tally in Olympic Games as prove of supremacy of their economics system. Indonesia initiated and hosted Games of New Emerging Forcer (Ganefo) as a display of fighting sprit and solidarity among developing countries against imperialism and colonialism.

Coe Report (1985) provided a lengthy argument on why winning in a major international sporting event can be consider as public good with its positive effect to government and people. The achievement pushes up the pride among the citizens of their country and strengthening their sense of identity. Second, the triumph bolsters the country’s image and its product abroad resulting with increase in export. Finally, the victory of few athletes brings mass influx of amateur sportsperson to the field and resulting in a general health improvement of ordinary citizen.

It is interesting to note that while Indonesia was ranked as number 110 in the latest Human Development Index (HDI) report, all countries that defeated Indonesia in the medal tally of 2005 SEA Games have higher HDI rank than us. Since HDI is a composite index of GDP, education and life expectancy, the correlation with sport medal is very likely. Higher average GDP will result in higher nutritious intake and longer life expectancy is a reflection of a more healthy society. Despite popular belief that athletes do not need to be smart, many games certainly need strong analytical ability.

But are there a rigorous relationship between country indicators and sport performances?

Many researchers dwelt on this topic and the results seem to lend support to the hypothesis. Snyder has conducted statistical analysis on Olympics Games result as early as 1936. More recent applied econometrics study by Johnson and Ali (2000) on Olympic Games after World War II found medal counts to be significantly affected by population size and GDP per capita.

The first account could be explained by assuming potential sport talents of medal aptitude, if trained properly, are normally distributed across population of the world. The proportion is the similar in all countries and regions, but the countries with larger population will have larger pool of absolute number of potentially excellent athletes to draw from than smaller countries. Assuming the training process is not too different across countries, a strong assumption as we have witnessed, the bigger country will obtained more medals at sporting competition.

GDP per capita is an indication of the capital available to support and trained athletes in a particular country. The rich country would be able to provide better medical treatment, nutritional intake and high tech training facilities. Behind one Olympic gold winner in developed country, stand a small army of coaches, psychologists, nutritionist and doctors. The role of sport companies to provide the lightest and strongest sporting equipment with exotic materials can not be dismissed. Moreover, the lure of the lucrative sponsorships and product endorsements deal for top athletes will provide financial incentive for future champion to train while still young. In the Atlanta 1996 Games, the countries where the world's poorest 1, 5 billion people live only managed to won three percent of the medals.

Gratton (1998) used production approach to the problem. He analyzed as if the medals are produce by labour, services of athletes and coached, and capital, facilities and equipment used for training and regular competition. In the long run the result is correlated with amount of resources that the country invests in sport effectively and efficiency of its utilization. Moosa and Lee Smith (2004) analyzed the result of Sydney 2000 Games with 2310 regressions, both traditional and restricted extreme bounds analysis, to come up with conclusion that the only robust variables are the number of athletes and national expenditure on health. But number of athletes is a signalling data that reflects the strength and potential medals tally of a particular country since they already have more people that pass the competitive Olympic qualifiers.

But the relation does not necessarily work both ways and sport achievement can hardly be considered as reason for healthy national indicators. Barra (2000) cited example of Kenya with population of 28 millions and one of the poorer country in Africa but has been winning medals consistently in the field of distance running. He also argued that the success can not be attributed to cultural and social factors as commonly belief since only in 1980s running become a popular sport in Kenya.

In the end, there is no better remedy than go back to basic. Education, health and economic growth are as important for the people of a country as to its athlete’s performances. Fix it and the gold medals will eventually come. There is enough blame to go around this time but the real danger is to ignore the real lesson.

Size doesn’t always matter.