🏟 If you build it…

Hi Quartz readers!

As the Olympics head into the final two days of competition, China has the most gold medals, but so far the US will be going home with the most hardware. Where does this newsletter rank in your inbox? Let us know by filling out this brief survey. 

Global news is a marathon, not a sprint. Stay up to date for the long haul by subscribing to the Quartz Daily Brief. 

Highlight reel

• The women’s soccer final came down to a shootout, with Canada outscoring Sweden 3-2 to win the gold medal.
• American Allyson Felix’s bronze in the women’s 400m is her 10th Olympic medal, giving her the highest total of any woman track athlete in history.
• April Ross and Alix Klineman of the US took gold in women’s beach volleyball.
• The Netherlands beat Argentina in the women’s field hockey final, while India wasn’t able to repeat the men’s team’s success and lost to Great Britain in the bronze medal match.
• The International Olympic Committee stripped credentials from two Belarusian coaches who tried to force sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya to return to their country.

Constructive criticism

Architecture, believe it or not, was once an official Olympic sport. Swiss, Dutch, and Austrian architects have won gold medals for innovative schemes for sporting arenas and town plans. Though the International Olympic Committee canceled the arts competition after the 1948 London Games, the tradition of engineering grand buildings lives on in the architecture of Olympic stadiums.

More than a venue for ceremonies and select sporting events, Olympic stadiums are stages for the host city’s soft power campaigns. Even before the coronavirus pandemic foiled Japan’s meticulous planning, building the Tokyo Games’ marquee stadium provided a dramatic arc to the 2020 Summer Games. Erecting the $1.4 billion, 68,000-seat arena in the Shinjuku ward featured a battle between two starchitects and a budget scandal that revealed much about the Japanese mindset.

But with greater awareness about the environmental impact of the construction sector, many are questioning if these behemoth structures are worth it. Barcelona’s Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, used for the 1992 Summer Olympics, has proven to be a locus for urban renewal, but many more mega stadiums tend to become white elephants. Beijing’s 91,000-seat “Bird’s Nest” stadium built for the 2008 Summer Games, for instance, is largely underutilized and costs $11 million annually to maintain.

As cities vie to host the quadrennial event, it’s essential that their Olympic-sized dreams include a thoughtful plan about the aftermath of their Olympic infrastructure. —Anne Quito

By the digits

1,945: How many more Olympic medals the US has compared to England, the second most awarded nation still in existence, as of the 2018 Winter Games

18: Total competitors in this year’s BMX freestyle event, one of the smallest of 2021

2: Number of teams in the 1900 Olympic cricket competition; England took gold and France got silver

348%: Increase in followers to NBCUniversal’s Olympics channel on TikTok since the opening ceremony

3,300: NBCUniversal employees—1,600 in Tokyo and 1,700 in the US—working on Olympics coverage

2: Athletes who have won Olympic medals competing for more than one nation

What to watch for

There are still plenty of marquee events—the marathon, basketball, men’s soccer, team artistic swimming—to look forward to this weekend. The final medals will be handed out at Sunday’s closing ceremony, which will also include a parade of participating nations’ flags and a final lap for the athletes who are still in Tokyo. Many of the rest of the festivities were pre-recorded.

At some point, the Olympic flag will be symbolically handed off to a representative of the next Summer Games host city, in this case, Paris. In Rio in 2016, then-Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe dressed as Super Mario for that part of the ceremony. Here’s hoping we get Emmanuel Macron in an Asterix costume this year.

Quotable

“I wanted to return my gratitude to the concerned people and volunteers who are running the Olympics during this difficult time. I ended up with this shameful result. I’m truly sorry.” —Japanese Greco-Roman wrestler Kenichiro Fumita after winning a silver medal

Small but mighty

We all know which countries win the most medals at the Summer Olympics: the US, China, and Russia. But these nations with large populations have an advantage—they can send more delegates, and they have a larger pool of people to choose from.

Here’s one way to equalize the conversation: Which countries have the best medal-to-population ratio? At the last Summer Games, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, here’s what the countries with the lowest population per medal looked like:

🇬🇩 Grenada: 106,825 people per Olympic medal (1 medal total)

🇧🇸 Bahamas: 194,009 (2 medals)

🇯🇲 Jamaica: 247,812 (11 medals)

India, on the other hand, consistently foils the trend. With a population of around a billion, and a poor history of Olympic wins, the country had the worst population per medal ratio in 2016: 655,525,263 per medal (2 medals).

Instant replay

💵 The entry-level costs for starting every Olympic sport

💆‍♂️ Why Olympic athletes love cupping and other alternative therapies

🤔 The world has 193 countries, so why are there 205 teams in the Olympics?

🎵 This email was produced while attempting to learn to play John Williams’s “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” on the ukulele. It’s…not going well.

Our best wishes for an inspiring day. Get in touch with us at needtoknow@qz.com and live your best Quartz life by downloading our iOS app and becoming a member. Today’s email was brought to you by Anne Quito, Amanda Shendruk, Jordan Weinstock, and Liz Webber.