💧 Low Expected Return

[But not zero]
This past Saturday, I found myself watching the men’s Olympic high jump finals. This contest came down to two competitors, New Zealand’s Hamish Kerr and America’s Shelby McEwen. After both clearing 2.36 meters, they both failed on all three attempts to clear 2.38 meters. That left them with a choice: they could agree to a tie, and each receive a gold medal, or they could go to a jump-off, where one would win a gold medal and one would fall to silver. Back in 2021, Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy and Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar agreed to a tie, and the world celebrated their camaraderie.

In 2024, however, that was not to be. Instead, Kerr and McEwen went to a jump-off, ensuring only one man would receive a gold medal. Apparently, Kerr made that call, leaving McEwen little choice but to go along. As I watched, I couldn’t understand why someone would take this risk. I mostly still can’t. There seemed to be approximately zero upside to the gamble. A shared gold is, to my mind, exactly as good as a solo gold. No one will ever disparage it.1 But if you fall to silver, well, then you failed to win gold.

Nevertheless, it was a jump-off, and it took quite some time. NBC’s live coverage of this was, frankly, lousy, failing to explain things well and failing to show crucial missed jumps. Eventually, though, Kerr emerged victorious. He claimed gold for himself and relegated McEwen to silver. That led to a different shared victory, as America missed out on leading the gold medal count. Instead, both the US and China finished the Olympics with 40 gold medals a piece.

After the games concluded, I found myself continuing to think about how this all went down. I read more about it, and learned that there was at least some incentive not to split the gold. It turns out that this year, the international governing body for track and field called “World Athletics” is providing gold medalists (and only gold medalists) a $50,000 prize.2 Presumably, if Kerr and McEwen had agreed to a tie, each man would’ve received half of that prize. So, there was a $25,000 swing in expected return by going to a jump-off.

However, this doesn’t fully cover it. Both America and New Zealand pay their athletes for winning medals. America pays gold medalists $37,500, silver medalists $22,500, and bronze medalists $15,000, while New Zealand has bonuses of $40,000 for gold, and $30,000 for both silver and bronze.3 Thus, the final math looks like this:

Shelby McEwen’s Numbers

Solo gold: $87,500

Shared gold: $62,500

Silver: $22,500

Hamish Kerr’s Numbers

Solo gold: $90,000

Shared gold: $65,000

Silver: $30,000

The jump-off meant Kerr was risking $35,000 with the possibility of winning another $35,000. McEwen, however, had to risk $40,000, to win only $25,000 more. That was a much worse bet. Alas, he did indeed get the short end of it.

I doubt Kerr was thinking of the exact money at stake. It seems that for him, the value of a solo gold was all that mattered.

For me, I would have been so proud to come in second in jumpoff — probably prouder than sharing a gold medal knowing that had already happened.

As before, I can’t relate to that mindset. That, and I’m sure only that, is the reason I am not an Olympic athlete.

Footnotes:

Fine, fine, no one should ever disparage it. ↩︎

They plan to have tiered cash prizes in 2028. ↩︎

From Forbes: “The medal bonuses are listed in U.S. dollars, converted from the local currency at the exchange rate as of August 11 and rounded to the nearest thousand.” ↩︎