Olympic Participation
This essay originally appeared in The
Elliott Wave Financial Forecast in August 2004.
Back in 1992, when the number of nations competing in the Olympics reached a new high of 172, The Elliott Wave Theorist pointed to the form of the rise in Olympic participation since 1896 and said that the games were likely to experience a contraction. Like so many cultural expressions of the rising social mood, the expansion has extended through the Atlanta (1996), Sydney (2000) and Athens (2004) games. The addition of Iraq and Afghanistan will push the Athens country total to 202, a new high by a slight margin.
Figure 1
The lower line on the chart, the total number of athletes, displays a subtle but telling divergence. Currently, the number of athletes competing in the 2004 games is expected to fall slightly, from 10,744 in 2000 to 10,340. A decline of 300 may not seem significant, but its position at the end of a five-wave move margin covering 104 years and its conjunction with a Grand Supercyle peak in stocks suggest that a major downturn in Olympic participation has started. In fact, the shift actually started in 2000, the year of the all-time high for stocks. After the Sydney Olympics, the president of the International Olympic Committee stated, “We realize the size is getting a little bit too big and getting to the limits of what a city can deliver.” He later added that IOC wants to “halt the expansion of the games.” After growing steadily from a low of 9 in 1896, the number of sports has been capped at 28. The number of events will also fall during the 2004 games, from 300 to 296. Votes dropping modern pentathlon, softball and baseball have been postponed but are expected in coming months. They would be the first sports to be thrown out since 1936.
Due to terror fears, attendance is also expected to drop in
2004. Nationalists and anti-American sentiments are rising fast and may well
find some active form of expression in Athens. The potential for violence
and other disruptions is reminiscent of the tumultuous 1968 Mexico City games,
when a post social mood peak was culminating in a speculative burst for shares
and protesting students were gunned down in the streets of Mexico City. The
current cultural scene is replaying many of the same themes because it is
at a similar point in the transition in social mood. The era of relative tranquility
for the games is over.