  In the Olympic Games, professional athletes representing their nations
compete regardless of economic, political and cultural differences. In this
study, we apply gravity model to observe characteristics, represented by
distances among nations that directly compete against one another in the Summer
Olympics. We use dyadic data consisting of medal winning nations in the Olympic
Games from 1952 to 2016. To compare how the dynamics changed during and after
the Cold War period, we partitioned our data into two time periods (1952-1988
and 1992-2016). Our research is distinguishable from previous studies in that
we newly introduce application of gravity model in observing the dynamics of
the Olympic Games. Our results show that for the entire study period, countries
that engaged each other in competition in the finals of an Olympic event tend
to be similar in economic size. After the Cold War, country pairs that compete
more frequently tend to be similar in genetic origin.
