Odds of making the Olympics.

[VG_Addict]

In honor of the Olympics, I'd like to know just what the odds of even making it to them are.

[Eff Pandas]

Theres like ~11k athletes at the Olympics. There are 7.4B people in the world. So about 1 in 670,000 people made the Olympics.

But obviously some are more or less likely to qualify based on natural talent, training & work ethic altering those odds for specific people who have or don't have those & other attributes.

[Infamous]

Theres like ~11k athletes at the Olympics. There are 7.4B people in the world. So about 1 in 670,000 people made the Olympics.

But obviously some are more or less likely to qualify based on natural talent, training & work ethic altering those odds for specific people who have or don't have those & other attributes.

Welp, that was easy...

[DeadLikeMe]

Depends. Do you have dual nationality with some country that sucks at the Olympics? Then you can represent a country in obscure sports that aren't played there. Like that German Lord who skis for the Mexican winter olympic team. The equestrians are all pretty much millionaires/billionaires.

[deathofaclown]

Too many factors involved to know for sure.

As DeadLikeMe says, equestrian and dressage and those sports are basically for rich people. How do you even get into a sport like that? There was no place to do that where i grew up.... completely unheard of.

Even Tennis to a certain degree is the same and that's a fairly popular sport. It seems like 95% of Tennis players come from money and their parents can afford to send them away to Tennis schools. You will get the odd few that slip through the net (no pun intended) like the Williams sisters, but most are rich kids. Where i was growing up, there was some Tennis nets put up near the school and they were stolen the same day.

Some sports are just not available for those who don't have a pot to p155 in when they're growing up.

[Eubankjr]

You'd need to know how many people actually tried to make the olympics, you can't just count everybody.

[El-blanco]

Theres like ~11k athletes at the Olympics. There are 7.4B people in the world. So about 1 in 670,000 people made the Olympics.

But obviously some are more or less likely to qualify based on natural talent, training & work ethic altering those odds for specific people who have or don't have those & other attributes.

Are all 7 billion training to get there? I think your math is a lil off lol

[Eff Pandas]

You'd need to know how many people actually tried to make the olympics, you can't just count everybody.

How do you count mfers who wanted to make the Olympics? How do you even define them "trying" to be in the Olympics?

Just looking at US boxing basically anyone who fought into any feeder tournament into another feeder tournament into another feeder tournament into an Olympic Team qualifying tournament is arguably a guy who was in line to win the 10 or so fights to get him into reach of fighting in the Olympics even if he got stopped within 30 seconds of the first round of the South Dakota region 7 tournament and had no clue he was 10 or so fights from a Olympic Team qualifying tournament. And that's just looking at US boxing. I got no clue how the Zimbabwe boxers or Swedish boxers could have qualified and all the steps in there process or the other several dozens of other sports qualifying works and how fair down the competition ladder it goes.

I guess if we are counting all the people in all the feeder competitions into feeder competitions into feeder competitions into Olympic Team qualifying events in every Olympic event in every country competing in the Olympics a low number would probably reach a few million people just to throw out some guesstimate on a difficult number to accurately come up with.

[New England]

that's really not how any of this works.

you need to be supremely talented, work harder than most folks can imagine, and have a bit of luck in making trhough your career without any bad injuries that keep you out of a competition that only takes place every four years, and will only occur a few times during your prime at the very best.

[Weltschmerz]

I come from a very small country so under the right circumstances - maybe. Not in this life though I'm past best sell by date already unless it's some imaginary niche discipline like card board games or waterpipe smoking.