There’s probably 2 other factors that matter more. First being the opportunity to get into something, realise talent is there, which allows someone to decide to pursue a sport. Like if you live somewhere that isn’t big on swimming, young people won’t be exposed to it. Here in Aus, we tend to be introduced to swimming early. We’ll go to beaches etc. Kids are taught to swim as it’s a nice thing to do when it’s hot weather. I learned to swim as a young kid at a local swimming centre tied to a university.

On the flipside, lots of other countries will kick our ass when snow or ice is involved. We just aren’t exposed to those sports anywhere near as much. Some are entirely foreign to us. Australia will never win an ice hockey medal. Personally I’ve seen actual snow once in my life.

The second is gov funding or the means to individually progress. Some sports don’t have much interest from a country therefore no funding isn’t put into them. Less affluent countries may have very little if not zero funding put into any athlete. That’s why you’ll hear stories of athletes who overcame a lot just to make it to the games at all, let alone be on a podium.

So with any event, it’s good to keep in mind, how much access does someone truly have to it? How much sporting culture does a particular country have? What kinda sports have people from a country historically been keen on, therefore that country actively tries to get people into? Ya know, it’s why the Brazilian women won beach volleyball, and not say, the Finnish.

Baseball and cricket are on the way next time and there’s a set of countries who will be in contention for each. And I doubt there’ll be much overlap. In those cases, it’s a national exposure thing. Race isn’t much of a factor if at all.