Although the United States lead the all-time Summer Olympics medal table, and the Soviet Union have the highest average medal tally per event, it is the Bahamas who has the highest medal count per capita. With 8 golds and 16 total Olympic medals, and a population of fewer than 290,000 people in 2020, The Bahamas have won roughly 56 medals per million people. Until the 2020 Games, Finland consistently had the highest number of medals per capita, due to its legacy in athletic and wrestling events in the mid-twentieth century, although smaller (particularly Caribbean) nations have climbed the table in recent years. Olympic tradition and lower populations in the top ten With 511 total medals, Hungary is the most successful nation to have never hosted the Summer Olympics. Unlike the Bahamas or Finland, Hungary's medal haul has been consistently high throughout Olympic history, and they are currently eighth in the overall medal table. Hungary has won a large proportion of its medals in fencing, swimming and canoeing events, and is top of the overall table in pentathlon and water polo events. When it comes to gold medals per capita, Hungary is in second place with just under 19 medals per one million inhabitants. In addition to Finland, other Nordic countries have performed well at the Olympics on a per capita basis, as their high rate of participation over time and relatively low populations means that four of the top ten spots on this list are taken by Scandinavian countries. U.S., Soviet Union and China fall behind As mentioned previously, countries who have won the most medals overall do not have always the highest per-capita totals. For example, China has the fourth-most gold medals of all time, but, as China has the highest population in the world, this translates to just 0.18 golds per million people. The U.S. has won a total of 3 golds and 8 total medals per million people, while the Soviet Union had won fewer than four medals per million people, based on its population in 1990.

The United States is the most successful nation of all time at the Summer Olympic Games, having amassed a total of 2,520 medals since the first Olympics in 1896.

Team USA gets the gold medal Of the 2,520 medals won by Team USA over the years, over one thousand have been gold. The dominance of the United States can be shown in the fact that only two other nations, Russia and Germany, have reached a combined medal tally of 1,000. The United States team has been present at every edition of the Olympics except for the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow, which they boycotted in protest against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan during the height of the Cold War. In the most recent Summer Olympics, held in Rio de Janiero in 2016, Team USA emerged with 121 medals, making it their third most successful Olympics in history. The team were able to claim 46 gold medals across a record 35 sports, including men’s basketball, women’s water polo, and tennis mixed doubles. 

Team USA only second best in the Winter Olympics The United States’ unrivalled success in the Summer Olympics is not quite matched in the Winter Olympics. Whilst Team USA claims second spot in the all-time medal tally with an impressive 305 medals, they are just beaten by Norway, who have claimed 368 medals since 1924. This tally is very impressive considering Norway’s population stands at just over five million inhabitants, a fraction of the size of the United States. Indeed, the most successful Winter Olympian of all time, Marit Bjørgen, hails from the Scandinavian country. The cross-country skiier collected eight gold medals, four silver, and three bronze in a dazzling career that spanned five Winter Olympics between 2002 and 2018.

BackgroundNational sporting achievement at the Olympic Games is important for national pride and prestige, and to promote participation in sport. Summer Olympic Games medal tallies have been associated with national wealth, and also social development and healthcare expenditure. It is uncertain however, how these socioeconomic factors translate into Olympic success. The objective of this study was therefore to examine the relationship between population muscle strength and Olympic medal tallies.Methods and ResultsThis study of handgrip strength represents a cross-sectional analysis of the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study, which is an ongoing population cohort study of individuals from high-, middle-, and low-income countries. Within participating countries, households from both urban and rural communities were invited to participate using a sampling strategy intended to yield a sample that was representative of the community. Households were eligible if at least one member was aged 35–70 years and if they intended living at the same address for a further four years. A total of 152,610 participants from these households, located in 21 countries, were included in this analysis. Handgrip strength was measured using a Jamar dynanometer. Olympic medal tallies were made over the five most recent Summer Games.There was a significant positive association between national population grip strength (GS) and medal tally that persisted after adjustment for sex, age, height, average daily caloric intake and GDP (total and per capita). For every 1kg increase in population GS, the medal tally increased by 36% (95% CI 13–65%, p = 0.001) after adjustment. Among countries that won at least one medal over the four most recent Summer Olympic Games, there was a close linear relationship between adjusted GS and the natural logarithm of the per capita medal tally (adjusted r = 0.74, p = 0.002).ConclusionsPopulation muscle strength may be an important determinant of Summer Olympic Games medal success. Further research is needed to understand whether population muscle strength is modifiable, and whether this can improve Olympic medal success. Extreme outcomes may reflect the average attributes of the population from which the individual experiencing the extreme outcome is drawn.

Looking simply at the numbers of medals won in the 2012 Olympic Games may not actually tell us which countries over-performed against our expectations based on the size of the talent pool available to them.

So what does looking at medals won in the context of the size of a nation's population do to the all important medal table? Are China and the US still top dogs? Do GB do quite as well as one might expect?

Check out the Intelligence Unit's Alternative Olympics 2012 Medal Table to find out.

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Note: users will need to enable macros in Excel for the ranking function to work properly.

This file now shows the final medal standings.

In the history of the Summer Olympics, the United States has been the most successful nation ever, with a combined total of 2,761 medals in 29 Olympic Games. More than one thousand of these were gold, with almost 900 silver medals, and nearly 800 bronze medals. The second most successful team in Summer Olympic history was the Soviet Union**, who took home 440 golds and more than 1,100 total medals in ten Olympic Games between 1952 and 1992. When the total medal hauls of the Soviet Union, Russia and the Russian Empire are combined, they still fall short of the U.S. tally by over one thousand medals. Meanwhile, Great Britain sat in fifth place, with 299 golds and 980 medals in total. Emerging nations While European and Anglophone nations have traditionally dominated the medals tables, recent decades have seen the emergence and increased participation from athletes representing developing nations, such as Kenya, Jamaica, and particularly China. Although China has competed in just 12 Summer Olympics, they have the fifth most gold medals across a variety of events, despite only developing a significant Olympic presence in the 1980s. Athletes from African and Caribbean nations have also developed a more formidable presence since this time, by focusing their resources on specific sports; for example, Kenyan athletes have established a lasting legacy in distance running events, while Jamaicans have dominated sprinting events in recent years. Despite this increased investment, the past three Olympic Games have seen a record number of African-born athletes representing high-income countries in the Arabian Gulf; most notably, athletes born in Kenya and Ethiopia competing for Bahrain. The influence of money, politics and drugs As mentioned above, European and Anglophone countries have dominated the medals tables in the past; this is because they had the financial resources to send athletes around the world to compete, and, until 1964, the host cities were always in these countries, which caused financial and logistical difficulties for African, Asian and Latin American countries. Financial difficulties have caused some countries to refuse invitations to the Olympics as recently as the 1980s, for example, many African and Latin American countries joined in the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games (due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), saving face by citing the boycott and not financial problems as the reason. This boycott also contributed to the Soviet Union and East Germany's high medal tally, as both nations took over sixty percent of all available gold medals. In retaliation, the Soviet Union led a boycott of the following Games in Los Angeles, opening the way for the United States to win almost half of all available golds in 1984. Recent years have seen doping scandals replace financial and political factors as the main external-influence on the medals table. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was founded by the International Olympic Committee in 1999, to combat the increasing use of performance-enhancing substances in sports. Since then, it has had a major impact on the Olympic medal table, and has helped rescind and redistribute more than one hundred Olympic medals. Athletes from Russia and former-Soviet countries have been particularly affected by these measures, which follows a legacy of state-sponsored doping programs dating back to the 1980s. In 2019, WADA banned all Russian athletes from the 2020 Games in Tokyo due to yet another state-sponsored doping scandal; athletes from Russia could only compete if they have been cleared by WADA prior to the games, while representing the Russian Olympic Committee, rather than the country itself. Paris 2024 was also shadowed by the issue of doping, with some delegations criticizing WADA for clearing 11 Chinese swimmers to participate in the Games, despite testing for a banned substance in 2021.

Ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, Norway had won the most gold medals, with a total of 148. The country has also won the most Winter Olympic medals overall. Meanwhile, the United States has won a total of 113 gold medals at the Winter Olympics.

This statistic shows the number of medals won per million population at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, broken down by nation. Norway won 7.33 medals per million population in the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Abbreviations as per Table 1.

Looking simply at the numbers of medals won in the 2012 Olympic Games may not actually tell us which countries over-performed against our expectations based on the size of the talent pool available to them. So what does looking at medals won in the context of the size of a nation's population do to the all important medal table? Are China and the US still top dogs? Do GB do quite as well as one might expect? Check out the Intelligence Unit's Alternative Olympics 2012 Medal Table to find out. Note: users will need to enable macros in Excel for the ranking function to work properly. This file now shows the final medal standings.

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games were scheduled to be the first time a modern Summer Olympics will have an equal share of male and female athletes competing. The first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 were exclusively for male competitors, and although some female events were introduced in Paris in 1900, the share of events was just 2.2 percent. Over the next century, the ratio of female to male events has gradually narrowed, and at a faster rate in recent decades, reaching almost 49 percent in Tokyo 2020. Not only has the overall volume of female athletes increased, the last decade has seen the introduction of several mixed events; these included mixed shooting events and both sprinting and swimming mixed relays.