On the face of it, it's not such an unlikely scenario, and could have been reality as far back as 1992 when the idea was first mooted. The constituent countries of the United Kingdom have a problem with self-identity, particularly in sport. Many hours have been wasted trying to explain the differences between England, Great Britain and the UK - particularly when non-European languages like Chinese are unable to distinguish between the English 'nation', 'state' and 'country'. 'Team GB' doesn't feel a natural fit to most sports fans (note the palaver over the GB football team), yet the Olympics is one of the only occasions when the sporting entity closely matches the political entity. (And it does - Northern Irish athletes can and do represent Great Britain depending on their personal affiliation; the team name only doesn't reflect this for causing a spat with the Republic, whose NOC claims representation of the whole island. The only disconnect with political status is that some, but not all, Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies have their own NOC; as a result, Team GB gains the likes of Shara Proctor of Anguilla, Mark Cavendish of the Isle of Man and Carl Hester of Sark). It's only now that Team GB is consistently successful that the unionist idea receives such a boost from the Olympics - in 1996, when they flopped in Atlanta after England hosted the European Football Championships, it felt anachronistic.
The Olympics, despite the universal humanist drive, places a high value on nation states and nationalism. Yet political groupings are so fluid - in its time the Olympics has seen teams from the British West Indies, Bohemia, North Borneo, and 2012 was the first Games following the constitutional realignment of the Dutch Antilles and the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles NOC, leading to some Curacao athletes (like Churandy Martina) competing for the Netherlands while others competed as independents. Given constitutional and identity flux, it is not without the realm of possibility that Team GB will not exist in its present form at Olympic Games in the mid-future; the same can be said of Spain, Serbia and some other European nations. Theoretically, the EU is one treaty away from being a sporting entity. It is nevertheless extremely unlikely - even in the event of greater political union, the strength of history and tradition would surely maintain the traditional sporting units. An EU state would necessarily be far more localist than the US (where many regions did not form such strong identities prior to statehood) and China (where regional distinction is actively discouraged). Europe was forged in difference, conflict and opposition, from Charlemagne to Eurovision, and is arguably much the greater for it (while neutral Switzerland has the cuckoo clock); the US and China were forged in union. The Roman and Han Empires were comparable in size, time and scope; when the Roman Empire fell Europe disintegrated, when the Han fell China remained (largely) united, and thus both have remained since. A unified Team EU is realistically as likely as separate Guangdong and California teams competing.
(Incidentally, modelling a unified team is far easier than breaking up existing teams into regions - trying to understand exactly how a Yorkshire, Guangdong or California team would match up in 2012 would require not only very complete personal data but a very broad series of assumptions about representation requirements, how to split out existing basketball teams and rowing crews, but also greater knowledge of lower levels of sport in each region. The imaginary Yorkshire team would not just consist of Jess Ennis and the Brownlees, but would also be trawling the Dales for athletes to compete in table tennis and swimming; equally they would not benefit from the established Team GB funding and coaching set up and would be replaced in the GB team by other athletes, who may well push them harder than if they were the sole GB representatives.)
So, most importantly; how did the home team do?
The simple answer is that this sporting titan trounced the world. EU organs have enjoyed publicising this (see this, during the Olympic build up, and others just a Google away), and it's undeniably true. Taking the combined medal total from all the current EU countries (Croatia will have to wait until 2016 to have its athletes subsumed, surely making their water polo victory even sweeter) gives 92 golds, exactly two times the US total. And if we used the medal-first table, the victory is even more crushing: 305 medals to America's 104. Clearly game, set and match. It's also a resounding medals per capita victory; the EU may be notably more populous than the US (c.500m to c.300m), but not enough to put the victory down to scale, and it's still less than half the size of China. With the skills and traditions formed in intra-European competition, a combined team would take on the new world with some style.
Unsurprisingly, the large Western European countries dominate the medal contributors, with host Great Britain supplying over a fifth of the EU medals. Ever since 1992, when there were just 12 of these core members, EU athletes have accumulated more than 200 medals - enough to trounce China, Russia and the US quite comprehensively. And as the EU has grown, so has the medal haul, although not quite at the same pace, the newer members generally being smaller and contributing fewer medals, but more medals in more sports (Bulgarian wrestlers and Romanian gymnasts, for instance). In 2012, over two thirds of all medals won by European countries were won by EU athletes.
Unfortunately, even ignoring national prejudices, it's more complicated than that. This is the Olympics - unlike many other elite sporting competitions, politics, diplomacy and the 'Olympic spirit' are as outstanding as sporting competition and the competitors are not simply a rollcall of the best athletes in their class or division. The best are invariably present, injuries aside, but it's further down the field that representation suffers. This is particularly true for nations who dominate individual sports an events and, Jamaican sprinters and East African distance runners excepted, these are generally the biggest, strongest nations: many of the finest Russian modern pentathletes, US swimmers and Chinese divers miss out on the Olympics in order that smaller countries are represented by their own champions. This simple combined EU team is 3,700 strong, over a third of all competitors; in reality it would have to compete in proportion to its political power as one NOC like India, China and the US, and simply would not have as many athletes. While this would fortify and intensify the EU team's domination in sports like equestrian and handball, where Europe has always dominated, there can be no doubt that the competitiveness would be greatly reduced, and it would take a few bad rolls of the dice by the EU athletes to let in some strange looking champions.
Olympic entry requirements are complex, and defined by each sport individually in order to maximise the world appeal, not the competitiveness. Competitions like tennis grand slams can have as many entrants from each country as the world rankings implies, as the athletes are generally competing primarily for themselves, not for the country. For instance, if the top 100 tennis players came from Fiji, Wimbledon would consist of 100 Fijians, plus the usual selection of invitationals, wildcards and qualifiers. Olympic tennis, meanwhile, would consist of no more than 10 Fijians, as it is a competition that must appeal worldwide and with a nation against nation ethos. For some sports the rules are particularly strict - track cycling is limited to one national entry per event. With few events allowing more than 3 entrants per country (this could only theoretically happen in equestrian and weightlifting), 1-2-3 podium finishes are extremely rare; in 2012 this only happened in the men's 200m (Jamaica) and women's individual foil (Italy). However, there were 21 events in which EU countries took gold, silver and bronze; it should be no surprise that 15 of these came in canoeing, cycling, equestrian and sailing, all sports with a one-nation-per-event rule. EU dominance would be neutered if it competed as one team with the same rules in place; rivalries like Kenny vs Baugé would be decided round a table in Brussels, not in the velodrome, just like Kenny vs Hoy was. And incidentally, neither Kenny nor Baugé would even make the team.
Which leads to step two: lining the athletes up against a wall and picking a team.
Or rather, building a fairly simple selection model. As a disclaimer, it is almost certainly not perfect and would doubtless give different results if replicated, but I am very content with its accuracy and consistency to a high degree. So, the method:
Following each federation's selection criteria, and assuming that the EU selectors are logical and consistent with regards to recent competitions and rankings (a big assumption), Team EU is eligible to enter almost every competition (save some weightlifting and wrestling weight divisions). In team or group competitions, we have to assume that the highest ranked national team is selected to represent the whole EU (e.g., the Spanish men's football team and the German men's eight compete as they exist but with EU badges, as the England amateur football team used to compete as Great Britain) as there is no way to model how a combined team would be picked.
For instance: for athletics, a country can choose up to three competitors for each event if they all achieve the 'A' qualifying standard during the qualifying period at approved events. The high standard of European athletics means that three or more achieve this in almost every event. We must then assume that our Brussels selectors choose the three competitors with the best results in the season (results are here). For the men's hammer throw, for instance, Krisztian Pars (HUN), Pawel Fajdek (POL) and Nicolas Figere (FRA) are the three highest performers: they make the team. In reality, selectors might prefer Olympic champion Primož Kozmus (SLO), who was only the 11th best EU thrower in the season but had shown consistency in competitions and had a further throw than Figere over the whole qualifying period (not just the season). In the name of methodological logic and consistency, he is not chosen, and Team EU misses out on a medal: Kozmus actually got a silver medal for the hammer throw. In the Team EU scenario, Koji Murofushi is bumped up to silver and Ukraine's Olexiy Sokyyrshkiyy is the new bronze medalist. Likewise, as a team the German women's 4x100m relay team clocked the fastest time in qualifying, and are chosen in their entirety to represent the EU. In some events (e.g., rowing and sailing) athletes we selected based on results at recent championships - the highest EU finisher is taken per event. In others, more discretion is needed; a maximum of six male weightlifters can be selected across weight classes, so the six best overall EU performers at the recent championships are taken. For artistic gymnastics and equestrian, the best combination of five gymnasts who can perform in individual events and contribute to the overall team scores are chosen - as team scores are cumulative and can be modelled based on results, mixed nationality teams can be chosen and they are exceptions to the representative team rule.
Combined with hosting prerogatives (although the athletes generally qualify without it), Team EU is vast - 726 strong, nearly two hundred larger than the GB and US teams. It is dominated by Germany, France and Great Britain (although Spanish basketball, football, synchronised swimming and water polo teams boost their representation). The largest 9 nations make up c.85% of Team EU's athletes, whereas they only sent 70% of the EU athletes to London 2012. Smaller nations are squeezed out, as is Britain; with the host prerogative shared across Europe, a results-based selector would take more Germans than Britons, and about the same number of French. Only one in five of Britain's 2012 Olympians would also qualify with Team EU - 138 of these are due to losing the handball, volleyball, football, water polo and basketball teams, which would almost certainly not have qualified were Britain not hosting the Games. Almost all the smaller nations are squeezed down, but just two nations are totally unrepresented: Luxembourg and Cyprus (Malta's William Chetcuti qualifies for the double trap). That 2012 produced, in truth, the first Cypriot medal is a sign of how competitive the selection is.
Missing out Primož Kozmus and Pavlos Kontides are not the only poor selection choices made by my imaginary sporting Eurocrats; around 100 medal-winning athletes or teams do not make the EU team as they were not the highest ranked competitor or world champion at the time of selection - and about a third of these are British. Thus the Greek women's lightweight double scull crew is selected ahead of eventual gold medallists Copeland and Hosking, Simona Krupeckaite is the EU representative for both the women's sprint and keirin, for which she finished 5th and 7th respectively, and nine gold medal winning canoeists or canoe teams are not selected. For the sports in which the EU dominates, this makes little difference to the overall gold tally - in most cases, for instance Hunter and Purchase, the EU selection finished behind other EU competitors who miss out, and so are promoted up to gold.
Removing so many competitors due to one-entrant-per-nation rules does have a big effect on the overall number of medals. EU athletes won 305 medals at the 2012 Games; if we wedge them into the same team and subject them to pre-selection under existing rules, this nearly halves to 180. This is still enough to beat the US comfortably (74 of the 180 are gold), but the effect of integration is distillation. It is the British athletes - many of whom were not ranked highly enough to warrant selection in such a competitive environment, but who pulled through with the home crowd to achieve gold - who lose the most. 9 British gold medalists do not win in this scenario.
NB; modelling results, particularly in non-ranked knockout events (judo, tennis taekwondo), those dominated by Europe (canoeing, cycling), and those (equestrian, gymnastics) with mixed teams also competing as individuals, are tough to model when a large number of competitors are removed. A basic set of counterfactual assumptions have been applied consistently to achieve the results (e.g., if the selected athlete loses to a non-selected EU athlete in semi or quarter finals, they accede to the medals their defeater assumed); other assumptions would change the results, as would other selection assumptions, but the effect would not be significant.
Removing so many EU medalists also paves the way for other nations to step up and earn more. Of the 12 canoe slalom medals won in 2012, only one went to a non-EU country; with a combined EU team and 2012 rules, this rises to 7. EU sailors win 15 fewer medals than they did in truth, and Croatia, New Zealand and Australia step up to take them. 18 gold medals are lost through poor selections, of which 6 go to China; Russia, Australia and New Zealand, who are consistently competitive in the same sports as the EU, are the other biggest beneficiaries. Non-EU countries with a similar sporting profile to the EU such as Switzerland, Norway, San Marino, Iceland and Croatia make some notable gains too, and we see Pakistan, Ghana, Israel, Mauritius and Togo make it onto the medal table.
So Britain's success, so boosted by their home support, is massively diluted within the EU team - British Olympians would have won 32 fewer medals had they had to qualify for and compete for Team EU. The pay off - Britain can say that they top the medal table, but the only Union Jacks hoisted were in the cantons of Australia and New Zealand. So the winners outside the EU? The European and Anglophone countries who are competitive in Europe-dominated sports, but who are not in the EU. If an EU team ever became a reality, expect Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland to assume the dissolved entities' positions in the medal table.
Such counterfactuals only go so far, however. The entire funding, coaching and support structure of Team EU would be completely overhauled with shared facilities and systems, and the results would filter down - I won't suggest if they would be improved or worsened as a result of being centralised. And what of the home support? Jess Ennis and Chris Hoy received as much support in London as Londoners; the Dorney roar boosted Ulstermen and Londoners to medals alike, even for a country used to supporting its constituent parts against each other. Perhaps we can assume then that the crowd would have been fully behind Team EU and would been blind to the athletes' home nations, although eurosceptic MEP Daniel Hannan delights in pointing out that this may not be the case, and on the basis of most British attitudes to Europe he may be right. If Paris had won the 2012 Olympics, the support for Team EU would surely be fairly unconditional. Even the only major sporting tournament where 'Europe' competes - the Ryder Cup - is a poor model to measure support levels from, as the bulk of the European team tends to come from more Eurosceptic Britiain. But it's also possible that the support would have been as vocal for Lithuanians, Bulgarians and Portuguese clad in the same kit as the British athletes. This means that using the London results alone would miss out a key driver of success; doubtless this would have a significant effect on the final results.
A final large assumption is that the qualification rules remain the same; Europe's nominal overrepresentation in sports like cycling would be so reduced, and such a significant power and fan base disenfranchised and disappointed by the lack of competitive representation, that it is hard to imagine that the criteria would remain unchanged. And finally, would the grassroots legacy be lessened by much tougher qualification standards (particularly for smaller unrepresented countries), or heightened by the huge national success?
Equally, if we're trying to model how Team EU would perform, why not ask how Guangdong and California would do? On the European example, the sum of the US and China's constituent parts would be much greater than the whole; California would surely be an extremely formidable presence on the medal table, particularly if inter-State competition were as intense as intra-European competition is. On the other hand, the cumulative results of the constituent nations of the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union (several of whom now represent the EU) are not much greater than when they were heavily funded, centralised sporting units; and this is achieved with much inter-FSU competition in their traditionally strong events (weightlifting, wrestling etc) which would be nullified if reunited.
If it ever happens, the introduction of a Team EU would be the biggest shake-up to the politics, diplomacy and sporting competition of the Olympics since it became a truly global event; bigger than China's emergence or the Soviet Union's collapse. But despite making them winners, would it risk losing the hearts of most of the EU's citizens?
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