133k Saint-Jacques Ultra
I finished 133 km from Saugues to Le Puy-en-Velay in 25:29, after a night of rain, a headlamp that died in my hands and a body that was empty from halfway; three in ten starters did not finish at all.
Get in touch,
The 2004 NOM Target Group Monitor surveyed 24,757 Dutch residents aged 13 and older about their sports and personal interests. Its most interesting result is not one ranking, but a social map: education and income generally rise together, while age and gender split apparently similar activities into very different groups. The four interactive charts below let you explore those patterns.
Key takeaways
- Higher education and higher income are positively correlated across the displayed sports and interests, but their outliers are not the same.
- Golf stands out most on income and squash on education; investing and modern art show the same split among interests.
- Age and gender add another dimension: basketball is young, golf is old, aerobics and personal care skew female, while football and technology skew male.
I will first explain how to read the indices, then look at sports and personal interests.
How to read the indices
Every axis is an index centered on 100, the average for the Dutch population. A sport at 140 on the education axis has a stronger association with higher education than the population average; a sport at 70 has a weaker association. These are relative positions, not percentages or direct measurements of income, education, age, or gender.
The first and third charts place education horizontally and income vertically. The second and fourth place the relative share of women horizontally and relative youth vertically. The dotted lines divide each plot into four quadrants around the population average. The labels make the large patterns easy to see, while hovering a point gives its category in the denser parts of a chart.
Sports, income, and education
Most of the displayed sports sit above the population average on both education and income. They form a clear diagonal from gymnastics and basketball in the lower left to skiing, tennis, squash, and golf in the upper right. Education and income are closely related, but the points away from that diagonal show that they are not interchangeable.
Golf has the highest income index at 173, but its education index of 159 is well below squash at 233, skiing at 199, and tennis at 196. Squash is therefore the clearest education outlier, while golf is the clearest income outlier. Sailing, cycling, running, snowboarding, fitness, and hockey form a second group above average on both measures without reaching those extremes.
The lower outliers are equally distinct. Gymnastics is lowest on both axes, at 35 for education and 73 for income. Basketball and handball are also below average on both, while darts combines a particularly low education index of 63 with an income index much closer to average at 94. Football and equestrian sports sit in a different quadrant: below average on education, but above average on income.
Aerobics is easy to overlook between the extremes. Its education index of 156 is slightly higher than running and fitness/bodybuilding, but its income index of 111 is lower. Table tennis, martial arts, volleyball, and athletics cluster closer to the center, while swimming is almost exactly average on education and slightly below average on income.
The same sports by age and gender
Basketball has the youngest profile at 130, followed by table tennis, snowboarding, hockey, and martial arts. Golf is the oldest sport in the chart at 96. That age difference adds useful context to the income chart: the highest-income sport also has the oldest audience, while several sports with lower income indices have younger audiences.
Gender produces the widest spread. Aerobics has the strongest female profile at 161, followed by gymnastics at 150 and equestrian sports at 139. Football sits at the other end at 22, with motor racing at 25, billiards at 33, and cycling at 35. Basketball is relatively young without a large gender imbalance, while hockey and snowboarding combine young audiences with a moderate male skew.
Together, the two sports charts show why a single label such as “high-income sport” hides a lot. Golf, squash, aerobics, and hockey all occupy different combinations of income, education, age, and gender.
Interests, income, and education
Personal interests show the same overall diagonal as sports: higher education and higher income tend to move together. Investing, modern art, economics and finance, technology, literature, and modern interior design all sit above average on both axes, but each occupies a different part of that upper-right quadrant.
Investing has the highest income index at 159, while modern art has the highest education index at 202. Economics and finance and technology are more balanced, both high on income and education. Literature and psychology lean much more strongly toward education than income: literature reaches 172 on education but 125 on income, while psychology reaches 169 and 111.
“High culture” is not one demographic category. Classical music, opera, and musicals score 129 on education but exactly 100 on income, while modern art is far above average on both. Modern and classic interior design also differ: modern interior design reaches 127 on education and 135 on income; classic interior design sits at 99 and 121. Astrology is the main lower outlier, almost average on education at 101 but lowest on income at 78.
Technology is notable for being high on both socioeconomic indices without being the most extreme on either. Personal care sits close to average on both. Their separation becomes much larger when age and gender are added.
The same interests by age and gender
Technology has the strongest male profile at 33, followed by cars at 47, computers at 60, investing at 66, and economics and finance at 74. Personal care is the strongest female interest at 149; fashion and astrology both sit at 139, followed by dieting at 138 and jewelry and watches at 129.
Age separates these groups further. Investing and economics and finance skew older as well as male. Technology, computers, and cars still skew male, but have younger profiles. Personal care, fashion, astrology, and jewelry and watches combine a female skew with a young profile.
Classical music, opera, and musicals have the oldest profile in the entire chart at 43. Plants and flowers, parenting, investing, classic interior design, and economics and finance also sit well below 100 on youth. Pop and rock music and film and video are much younger, while literature and modern art combine high education with older profiles.
The most extreme age result is household matters at 203, far above jewelry and watches at 154 and pop and rock music at 152. Its gender index of 94 is close to average, and its income and education indices are also unremarkable. It is an unusual point among otherwise recognizable demographic patterns.
Four dimensions, not one ranking
The strongest overall pattern is the positive relationship between education and income. Most displayed sports and interests sit near or above the population average on both, and many follow a clear diagonal. The useful information lies in how categories depart from that diagonal.
Golf and investing are most distinctive on income. Squash and modern art are most distinctive on education. Gymnastics and astrology define the lower ends of those same charts. Aerobics and personal care become much more distinctive on gender, while basketball and household matters do so on age. Technology changes character between charts: affluent and educated in one, young and strongly male in the other.
No single axis captures what a sport or interest “says” about its audience. The four dimensions together are the result: socioeconomic position, age, and gender overlap, but each adds information that the others miss.
The data
The chart data are available as JSON: sports by income and education, sports by age and gender, interests by income and education, and interests by age and gender.
The NOM Target Group Monitor studies the interests, activities, possessions, and consumption of Dutch residents aged 13 and older. The charts in this post describe its 2004 survey, so they are best read as a snapshot of the Netherlands at that time.
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