Abstract
Research suggests Olympic athletes are less likely to emerge from cities with very small and large populations and more likely to emerge from medium and medium-to-large cities (i.e., community size effects: Baker et al., 2009). However, recent observations suggest such effects can result from aggregating national data, which masks potential variation between provincial regions of Canada (Wattie et al., 2018). Therefore, we examined the community size data of summer (n = 489) and winter (n = 278) Canadian Olympians and Paralympians who debuted between 2010 and 2016. When grouped into population size categories, results revealed variations (min-max; mean) in the proportion of athletes' communities of origin, across provinces and summer (S) and winter (W) athletes: < 2,500 (S: 0-8%, x? = 4%; W: 0-22%, x? = 10%); 2,500 – 4,999 (S: 0-2%, x? = 1%; W: 0-25%, x? = 7%); 5,000 – 9,999 (S: 0-10%; x? = 3%; W: 0-25%, x? = 9%); 10,000 – 29,999 (S: 0-16%, x? = 6%; W: 0-20%, x? = 9%); 30,000 – 99,999 (S: 0-39%, x? = 15%; W: 0-45%, x? = 15%); 100,000 – 249,999 (S: 0-71%, x? = 14% W: 0-58%, x? = 16%); 250,000 – 499,999 (S: 0-43%, x? = 8%; W: 0-15%, x? = 2%); 500,000 – 999999 (S: 0-92%, x? = 46%; W: 0-72%, x? = 27%); ? 1,000,000 (S: 0-29%, x? = 3%; W: 0-28%, x? = 4%). These findings support previous concerns that community size effects may not be generalizable to all athlete populations and to different regions within a country.
