🏅 Analyzing Olympic Games Dataset with SQL

This project explores the Olympic Games dataset, analyzing participation trends, medal distributions, and the evolution of the Olympics over time.

Dataset used: Olympic Games Dataset in Kaggle

📘 Overview

The goal of this project is to conduct data exploration, aggregation, and growth analysis to uncover how the Olympics have expanded globally over time.

🧠 Key Insights

• 🌍 The number of participating nations increased significantly after 1980, reflecting the growing global reach of the Olympics.
• ☀️ The Summer Olympics consistently have more participants than the Winter Olympics.
• 🇺🇸 The USA earned the most total medals overall.
• 🇵🇭 The Philippines earned most of its Olympic medals in Boxing.
• 🏏 Sports such as Aeronautics, Basque Pelota, and Cricket were featured only once in the Olympics.
• 🥇 Charles Jacobus and Oscar Swahn were the oldest athletes to win a gold medal.
• 🏊‍♂️ Michael Fred Phelps II holds the record for winning the most gold medals in Olympic history.
  
  

🧩 SQL Techniques Used

• CTEs (Common Table Expressions): For modular and readable query building
• JOIN operations: To combine athlete and region data
• Window functions: Utilized SUM(), OVER(), and RANK() for running totals and rankings
• GROUP BY and CUBE: For data aggregation and generating subtotal or summary rows
• Aggregation functions: Used COUNT(DISTINCT) and MAX() for summarizing data
• Filtering and ordering: Applied WHERE, ORDER BY, and subqueries for precise analysis
• CROSSTAB: To pivot and compare medal counts across countries and medal types
  
  

💡 Example Queries

-- olympics rolling total participants and growth rate
WITH athlete_region AS (
    SELECT *
    FROM athlete_event
    JOIN region
    ON athlete_event.noc = region.noc
), participant_cte AS (
    SELECT
        games, 
        season,
        COUNT(DISTINCT region) AS total_participants
    FROM athlete_region
    GROUP BY games, season
) 
SELECT 
    games,
    season,
    total_participants,
    SUM(total_participants) OVER(PARTITION BY season ORDER BY games ASC 
        ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW) AS rolling_total_participants,
    COALESCE(ROUND(
        ((total_participants::numeric - LAG(total_participants) OVER(PARTITION BY season ORDER BY games)::numeric)
        / NULLIF(LAG(total_participants) OVER(PARTITION BY season ORDER BY games)::numeric,0))*100, 2
    ), 0) AS growth_rate_in_pct                      
FROM participant_cte
ORDER BY games;

-- top 10 athletes who earn most gold medals
SELECT 
    name, 
    team, 
    COUNT(medal) AS total_gold_medals,
    DENSE_RANK() OVER(ORDER BY COUNT(medal) DESC)
FROM athlete_event
WHERE medal = 'Gold'
GROUP BY name, team
ORDER BY total_gold_medals DESC
LIMIT 10;

-- medal counts across countries and medal types
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS tablefunc;
SELECT 
    * ,
    COALESCE("Gold", 0) + COALESCE("Silver", 0) + COALESCE("Bronze", 0) AS total_medals
FROM CROSSTAB($$
    WITH medal_region AS (
        SELECT reg.region, ath.medal
        FROM region reg
        JOIN athlete_event ath
        ON reg.noc = ath.noc
    )
    SELECT 
        region AS country,
        medal,
        COUNT(medal) as total_medal
    FROM medal_region
    WHERE medal IS NOT NULL
    GROUP BY region, medal
    $$, 
    $$ VALUES ('Gold'), ('Silver'), ('Bronze') $$
) AS ct (Country VARCHAR,
           "Gold" INT,
           "Silver" INT,
           "Bronze" INT)
ORDER BY total_medals DESC;

⚙️ Tools Used

• PostgreSQL
• VS Code (SQL extension)
• Kaggle dataset
  
  

📂 Repository Structure

Analyzing-Olympic-Games-Dataset-with-SQL/
│
├── dataset/                    # Dataset files used for this project
├── query/
│   ├── preprocessing/          # Scripts for data cleaning and preparation
│   ├── EDA/                    # EDA queries
├── README.md                   # Project documentation
└── sample_outputs/             # Screenshots or result tables

🧑‍💻 Author

Gelo (Ryan Dela Cruz)

Data Analyst skilled in SQL, Python, and Excel

📊 Exploring data through real-world projects and insights

⭐ Acknowledgments

Dataset by heesoo37 on Kaggle.

Thanks to the open-source data community for making this analysis possible!

And special thanks to TechTFQ for providing valuable guidance and examples that inspired and refined the SQL analysis in this project.