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.

PurposeRanking of nations by medal tally is a popular feature of the Olympics, but such ranking is a poor measure of sporting prowess or engagement until the tallies are adjusted for major factors beyond the control of individual nations. Here we estimate and adjust for effects of total population, economy expressed as gross domestic product per capita, absolute latitude and Muslim population proportion on total medal counts in female, male, mixed and all events at the Pyeongchang winter and Tokyo summer Olympics and Paralympics.MethodsThe statistical model was multiple linear over-dispersed Poisson regression. Population and economy were log-transformed; their linear effects were expressed in percent per percent units and evaluated in magnitude as the factor effects of two between-nation standard deviations (SD). The linear effect of absolute latitude was expressed and evaluated as the factor effect of 30° (approximately 2 SD). The linear effect of Muslim proportion was expressed as the factor effect of 100% vs. 0% Muslim. Nations were ranked on the basis of actual vs. predicted all-events medal counts.ResultsAt the Pyeongchang Olympics, effects of population and economy were 0.7–0.8 %/% and 1.1–1.7 %/% (welldefined extremely large increases for 2 SD), factor effects of 30° of latitude were 11–17 (welldefined extremely large increases), and factor effects of 100% Muslim population were 0.08–0.69 (extremely large to moderate reductions, albeit indecisive). Effects at the Tokyo Olympics were similar in magnitude, including those of latitude, which were surprisingly still positive although diminished (large to very large increases). Effects at the Pyeongchang and Tokyo Paralympics were generally similar to those at the Olympics, but the effects of economy were diminished (large to very large increases). After adjustment of medal tallies for these effects, nations that reached the top-10 medalists in both winter games were Austria, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Slovakia and Ukraine, but only Azerbaijan reached the top-10 in both summer games.ConclusionAdjusting medal counts for demographic and geographic factors provides a comparison of nations' sporting prowess or engagement that is more in keeping with the Olympic ideal of fair play and more useful for nations' Olympic-funding decisions.

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.

This dataset include Paris 2024 Olympic medal table and some basic country characteristics like GDP, population and life expectancy. It may be used to analyse the relationship between the Olympic success and some country-level features.

Features description: - Country - country name - Country Code - 3 letter country code (ISO 3166-1 alpha-3) - Number of athletes - size of the Olympic team - Gold medals - Silver medals - Bronze medals - Total medals - GDP - Gross Domestic Product (current US$) - GDP per capita - Gross Domestic Product per capita (current US$) - Population - total population - Life expectancy - life expectancy at birth (years) - Democracy - Democracy Index (Economist Intelligence Unit) - Gender equality - Gender Inequality Index (United Nations Development Programme) - Continent - Female athletes % - share of female athletes in the Olympic team

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.

BMI = body-mass index; GDP = gross domestic product; GS = grip strength; NA = not available because dietary data have not yet been analysed; SD = standard deviation. Medal tally refers to Summer Olympic Games from 2000–16 inclusive.

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.

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.