FAQs
Frequently asked questions regarding the general service across the API
API usage
Q. Calls to the API are returning an error, what does this mean?
A. See our Response Codes page for reference to any error codes.
Q. I'm concerned that i'm making too many/few calls to the API, what's the best way to use it?
A. We highly recommend mocking up a representative selection of calls that you're considering and passing it by a member of the on-boarding team so that we can best advise you. Generally, if partial response and pagination are utilised correctly you shouldn't require an excessive amount of calls but this is dependent on your services, users and traffic.
API General Content
Q. Are images available?
A. Images are not supported in the API. If you'd like to see images from the Olympics, the sport images team here at PA can provide a host of exclusive images and content that might be suitable for your needs. Please get in touch with your account manager.
Q. Are discipline icons available?
A. We receive the official discipline icons from the IOC, however, there are usage restrictions attached to these and so we do not expose these in the API. If you require access to the icons, please get in touch with your account manager.
Q. Do you provide translations in the API?
A. Translations are not supported in the Olympics API.
Q. Do you expose records in the API?
A. Records are not included in the current version of the API.
Q. Is there a list of all the events that will be available in the API?
A. As an event doesn’t exist in the API until it has been sent by the IOC as part of the schedule, we don’t expose a list of all events that may or may not appear during the Games.
Q. Standings and Brackets were available in the previous version. Aren't these available now?
A. User research for 2016 found that standing and brackets were not commonly used resources and so these have not been included in the development of v3.
Resource specific
Q. We've noticed that the IDs for past Games and those seen in the API now are different, why?
A. The official Olympics Data Feed from the IOC contains newly formatted IDs from 2017 eg.:
Men's Alpine Combined
OLD ID ASM1050
NEW ID 'ALPMAC----------------FNL-'
Q. Why isn't the rank ordering in the medal table by total medals per country?
A. There is a set ordering logic in the Medal Table which is dictated by the IOC. This prioritises the ordering by total Gold, Silver then Bronze medals.
Q. What's the relationship between Event and Unit and how do they build up to a result?
A. All disciplines contain unit results as the units build the schedule of the Games. Events can contain the cumulative result made up of the units. Not all disciplines contain event results but disciplines which contain results built of attempts, moves, runs etc. typically have a cumulative result which is exposed in the event.
Q. Why isn't there a Games schedule endpoint?
A. Our API exposes the official data direct from the IOC. There isn't a full Games schedule provided in that feed. Instead, the Games schedule is built up from units. Our API does provide functionality to query the unit endpoint by date, discipline and organisation so that our users can build a schedule for a particular date range, sport or country.
Q. Why are there countries in the Organisation endpoint that aren't participating in the Games?
A. We expose all organisations in this endpoint including federations, participating and non-participating. The reason for this being that this resource contains referential data which is referenced by the other resources. eg. An athlete may be from Russia but be competing for the OAR. Their participant profile would contain Russia but their competition would state OAR. We list both OAR and Russia in the Organisation list.
Only organisations flagged as participating by the IOC will appear in competition or the medal table.
Q. There are some events in the schedule that never 'finish', why is this?
Multiple events such as ceremonies, meetings, draws and other officiating events (eg. zeroing) will appear as events in the schedule but they do not come with a schedule status like a competition event.
Got any other questions?
Trial users
Please get in touch with our commercial team to direct any questions regarding the service.
Live users
Our on-boarding and customer support teams are on hand for any queries, contact [email protected]
Help us improve our FAQ section! Any feedback, please send to the relevant contacts as above.
Updated 6 months ago