Writing articles about Spanish medalists at the Paris Olympics

Personal project to create medalist articles

I have been working to improve the quality and quantity of articles related to Spain on the Japanese Wikipedia.

During the Olympic Games, such as the 2016 and 2021 Summer Olympics and the 2018 and 2022 Winter Olympics, I have been working on personal projects to create articles about the medalists of the Spanish Olympic team, and I did a similar personal project for the Paris Olympics.

At the Paris Olympics held from July 26 to August 11, 2024, the Spanish Olympic team won a total of 18 medals. The total number of medalists is 82, as they also won medals in team ball games such as men’s soccer and women’s water polo. Prior to this project, I created the Japanese Wikipedia “2024年パリオリンピックのスペイン選手団” (Spanish Olympic Team at the 2024 Paris Olympics).

The lack of medalist articles on the Japanese Wikipedia

Before the Paris Olympics began, 30 of the 82 Spanish medalists (37%) had articles on the Japanese Wikipedia.

In men’s soccer, all 22 players had articles before the Olympics began. Excluding men’s soccer, 8 out of 60 players (13%) had articles before the Olympics began. Also, 3 of the 8 players are players for whom I have written articles in the past, so excluding these 3, the number is 5 out of 60 (8%).

In other words, excluding soccer, the most popular sport in the world, more than 90% of Olympic medalists did not have articles on the Japanese Wikipedia.

Japanese media coverage of the Olympics is biased towards Japanese athletes. If you look at the “2024年パリオリンピックのメダリスト一覧” (List of medalists for the 2024 Paris Olympics) on the Japanese Wikipedia, you’ll see how few medalists have articles in the Japanese version.

There is very little information available in Japanese about medalists from minor sports who are not Japanese. In many cases, the Japanese media does not even know how to write the medalist’s name in their native language. Therefore, I decided to gather information from the English Wikipedia and English websites from the beginning.

In this personal project to create Olympic medalists, I do not aim to create great articles with detailed biographies and other information. Instead, I am strongly conscious of creating articles for as many medalists as possible and creating a starting point for information in Japanese.

I am also prioritizing medalists in individual sports over team sports. I want to highlight athletes in minor sports such as sailing, race walking, and canoeing, which are very active in Spain, even if they are minor sports.

Examples of created articles

ディエゴ・ボティン – Diego Botín

マリア・ペレス (陸上選手) – María Pérez (Race walker)

マルクス・ワルツ (Marcus Walz)

For this project, I created articles for 24 Spanish medalists.

Currently, there are articles for 54 out of 82 medalists from the Spanish Olympic team (66%). I believe this is the highest ratio for any of the major national teams other than the Japanese team.
I plan to continue similar personal projects in future Olympic years.