Source for list of Olympic athletes and their events

July 28, 2016 3:33 PM

I need somewhere to find a list of which athletes (and their country) are participating in which events. My google skills are failing me.

The Olympics site is useless. Wikipedia has some country information, which is the information I actually need. Unfortunately Wikipedia doesn't have the information for all events. NBC has no information except about the Americans.

Is there a list somewhere online?

posted by LizBoBiz to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (6 answers total)

I don't know of any complete list. I can't find one for men's gymnastics, the sport I follow. A search term you may find useful is "start list." There are some individual event start lists posted online by their governing federations. The International Wrestling Federation, for instance, has posted start lists here. It has a Rio logo on it, so perhaps it was complied by the Olympics organizers, but if so I don't know where to find it.
posted by not that girl at 4:38 PM on July 28, 2016

Also, some lists are not finalized. In gymnastics, for instance, some Russian athletes are waiting to hear if they will be able to compete. The Russian gymnastics federation has approved them but they also have to be approved by another body—this is due to the Russian doping situation.
posted by not that girl at 4:48 PM on July 28, 2016

The official Team USA roster is available here, and lists by sport, home state, and has a sortable list as well.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:28 PM on July 28, 2016

D'oh! Sorry, thought you were looking for the U.S. list. You'll likely have to go by individual country team lists, unfortunately.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:29 PM on July 28, 2016

NBC has a surprising amount of international athlete/team information if you use their filter menus which are a bit buried. Perhaps you could find a way to scrape the results.

Scroll down the page and click on the Country submenu. All countries are there in a dropdown list. Many small countries have no athletes listed and I'm not sure how complete the data is, but perhaps it will be of use to you.

Since you didn't mention needing the list to be free, I should also bring up Gracenote which has what you need plus up to the minute medal counts, athlete bios, and event results for all sports. So, if you're a news organization and need data, this is to whom you would pay the big bucks.
posted by oxisos at 9:41 PM on July 28, 2016

I'd suggest trying the Olympics website again closer to when the games get under way. It was extremely informative in Sochi and London, with bios, photos, results, and fun facts for all athletes, available from both the team pages and the event pages.
posted by clorox at 12:02 AM on July 29, 2016