Minnesotans In the Olympics

Quote of the Day

Yes, I should have given more praise.

— Sir Winston Churchill, quoting the reply of the then elderly Duke of Wellington when a friend asked him, 'If you had your life over again, is there any way in which you could have done better?'

Figure 1: People Curling in Northern Minnesota. (Source)

I spend a lot of time in northern Minnesota now that I have a home there. I have been surprised as to how popular curling is in the area (Figure 1). The US curling team at the 2018 Olympics is dominated by people from northern Minnesota. I also notice that there are quite a few Minnesotans participating in the games' other sports – the numbers are large enough that the New York Times has even written an article called "Team USA? More Like Team Minnesota" on the topic (PDF of the article). Our state does not have a huge population, ~5 million, and most of that population is concentrated around Minneapolis and St. Paul. The northern part of the state is only sparsely populated as it is covered with national forests and wilderness areas.

To understand the participation of Minnesotans in the Olympics, I grabbed an Excel file from the US Winter Olympic Team web site  and generated a couple of pivot tables, which I show below. My workbook is include here.

Figure 2: Top Ten Home States for US Olympic Athletes.

California contributes the most athletes to this year's Olympic team, followed by Colorado and Minnesota (Figure 2). Since Minnesota has no mountains, alpine events are not our strength – though Lindsey Vonn is from St. Paul and first skied here at Buck Hill.

The big snow sports here are hockey, cross-country skiing, and curling. You see this reflected in the athletes we send to the Olympics (Figure 3). Biathlon is a combination of cross-country skiing and shooting, which are two common passions here.

At this point, the Minnesota athletes have brought home medals in curling, hockey, and cross-country.

Figure 3: Minnesota Participation in Olympic Sports.

For my family, skating and hockey became a passion first for my children and then for me – this is the reverse for most families. My dad was a hockey player and ice dancer, but I never had any interest early on in either sport. My children saw the movie The Mighty Ducks, and they became driven to skate. I learned to skate and play hockey on the kiddie ponds next to the rinks where my children were practicing.

Table of Athletes

I included a subset of the Olympic spreadsheet here for any general searching that I want to do.