The pathway to Olympic success

At the Glasgow Commonwealth Games Team South Africa were already 15 medals (four gold) closer at 7pm last night to matching and then overhauling our 33-medal performance of Delhi 2010.

Our Commonwealth Games performances always leave us upbeat about our standing in "global" sport, until the Olympics two years later, when reality strikes.

As a global multisport showpiece, the Commonwealth Games are dwarfed in terms of size, and thus medal competition, by the Olympics (71 nations in 17 sports versus 204 and 26 sports in London 2012, for example). The most notable absentees include the US, China, and most of Europe and Asia, who normally share about 70% of Olympic medals.

From the perspective of the athlete this is irrelevant - a medal is a medal - and all should be celebrated equally.

You can only beat the athletes before you, after all.

But if a country has an Olympic focus, then from the perspective of sporting management and leadership, the Commonwealth and Olympic games are linked together by one overarching strategy.

So, I would suggest it matters a great deal to develop a systematic method of benchmarking Commonwealth achievements against desired Olympic performance.

It's a method of calibration, which would prevent the rollercoaster of overhyping Commonwealth success before downplaying subsequent Olympic disappointment, as we have done every time since 1992.

Instead, we need to a) celebrate Commonwealth performances on their own merits, while b) understanding their tactical value and implications within a broader, Olympic-focused strategy.

First, the Commonwealth Games are a pathway. They represent an excellent opportunity to expose aspirant Olympians to a multisports event - experience is never a wasted investment. But this differs from how the system - all sports - must evaluate actual performances within a broader strategic context.

A few stats give some perspective on the situation. The best 10 nations at the last three Commonwealth Games have won 92% of the medals (it's very top-heavy, unlike the Olympics). Those 10 countries have won 15% of the Olympic medals over the same period. Olympic medals are thus six times more scarce to Commonwealth Games nations.

Put differently, for every Olympic medal you target, you should, on average, have six Commonwealth medals as a base.

As expected, this differs by country. South Africa has won 117 medals at the last three Commonwealth Games, but only 13 Olympic medals over the same period. Corrected for total available medals, that's a ratio of 10.4, higher than the average, suggesting that we underperform at the Olympics compared to the Commonwealth Games.

But not quite as badly as India and Malaysia, mind you. Combined, they've won 318 Commonwealth medals since 2002, but only 13 Olympic medals, meaning they are 28 times more likely to succeed at the Commonwealth Games.

In contrast, Kenya and Jamaica are the most consistently successful nations, winning one Olympic medal for every 2.5 Commonwealth medals. That's because they are so dominant in the narrow range of events where they do win medals (long distance and sprint athletics), that even the addition of American, European and Asian competitors does little to dent their overall medal-winning capability.

There are also, not surprisingly, differences between sports. Rugby Sevens is, objectively, the most challenging Commonwealth medal to win because the top seven teams in the world are all present.

Compare this to technical and combat sports like shooting, archery, wrestling and judo - between zero and 5% of the Olympic medals won in London were won by Commonwealth Nations.

India and Malaysia, incidentally, win most of their medals in these sports, which explains why they are so poor in the Olympics.

South Africa? We struggle to convert because we are strong in aquatics and athletics, but lack the depth of quality to compete when the US and Europe are added.

However, a focus on individuals is not constructive in this discussion. Rather, we need a "systems" view, one that recognises the merits of Commonwealth Games, so that performances can be managed (celebrating them is different from managing them), and the Games can be optimised as the pathway to, hopefully, future Olympic success.