California Takes the Gold for Most Olympians
By: Leslie Pandey, Senior Content Writer/Editor | August 15, 2008
Swimmer Natalie Coughlin from Vallejo, California (Photo courtesy Al Bello/Getty Images)
Many of us here at Zillow have been cheering on the U.S. team in the Beijing Olympics this week. Which got us thinking, which state do you think has the highest number of Olympians? If you guessed California, you’re right. In fact, California wins by a mile — of the nearly 600 athletes that make up Team USA, 166 have hometowns in California. (The second-highest state, Texas, trails with 43 athletes.) Holy moly, there must be something in the water!
Of course, California also has the highest population of any state, so maybe that’s the difference. But that doesn’t explain why California has almost 4 times the number of athletes as Texas, which has nearly two-thirds the population of California.
Which city has Olympic bragging rights? According to this U.S. Olympians hometown list, that would be sunny San Diego. Seven Olympians call San Diego their hometown, closely followed by Irvine, California, with 6 athletes.
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Robert on August 15, 2008 10:57 am
What is the number of athletes per capita? That might even things out a bit.
Leslie Pandey on August 15, 2008 1:04 pm
Hi Robert,
Good question. I haven’t been able to find per capita numbers, but I’m pretty sure California would still rank pretty high on a per capita basis.
jt on August 15, 2008 1:17 pm
If you live in CA for 2 years you can claim residency.
CA has the best weather to support the Olympic athletes training regimen.
No brainer!
dhand on August 16, 2008 12:06 pm
There are a few major olympic training centers in:
Colorado Springs, Colorado; Lake Placid, New York; and Chula Vista, California. Chula Vista is in San Diego County.
Some olympians might move to those areas full time and use that as their place of origin.
Reference from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Olympic_Training_Center
Jonathan Blackwell on August 16, 2008 5:57 pm
Auburn University has been extremely well represented as well. We would be 10th in the medal count if we were a country.
http://www.GoGreenWithFHA.com
Marin on August 17, 2008 7:56 am
27 people competing in Beijing Olympics are from town Split,Croatia(Split is populated 200.000) so 166 from California with population of 36.5 mil is pretty much nothing in comparison to 27 on 200k!
Robert on August 17, 2008 1:07 pm
Well, based upon the population numbers provided by Marin, we can compute a ratio of athletes to population per thousand. This gives you a percentage of population that are the athletes.
Split, Croatia = 27 Olympians /(200,000/1000) population/thousand = 27 / 200 = 0.135 = 13.5%
Using numbers from http://www.census.gov and the numbers provided by the link in this post for Olympian home towns, we find the following:
The top five Olympians per 1k population are: (Drum roll please)
5. Wyoming 0.38%
4. California 0.45%
3. Vermont 0.48%
2. Maine 0.53%
1. Hawaii 0.62%
That was a bit of a surprise to me. Texas is at 18 with 0.18%
Rob on August 18, 2008 11:16 am
what is the break down of Texas? Which City has the most Olympians in the United States?
Leslie Pandey on August 18, 2008 12:51 pm
jt and dhand - 166 is the number of Olympians with hometowns in California. If you look at the link in the post to the map at NBCOlympics.com, you’ll see that they have separate categories for birthplaces, hometowns, and residences. The number of athletes with residences in California is still the highest in the country, but that’s separate from the hometown category.
Robert - Nice work! I would have never guessed Hawaii would be at the top.
Rob - You can find a breakdown of the Texas hometowns in the U.S. Olympians hometowns list I provided in the post. As for the U.S. city with the most Olympians, stay tuned. I’m working on a post on that topic that will go live later in the week.
Lisa on August 20, 2008 8:23 am
How many athletes participating for other countries in the 2008 summer Olympics actually live in the US
Leslie Pandey on August 20, 2008 11:06 am
Lisa - I haven’t seen any figures on that, but it seems like there are a lot of foreign athletes who choose to train in the U.S.
Here’s an interesting L.A. Times story on the growing trend of Mexican athletes who live in the U.S. but compete for Mexico: http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-olymex29-2008jun29,0,4510361.story
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