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.

Number of Olympics attended and medals won by Pacific Island countries.

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This dataset includes important economic, demographic and sport data related to Summer Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro 2016. Dataset includes variables such as: GDP, GDP per capita, Inflation, Population total, Population 15-64, Economic Active Population, Corruption Perception Index, Medal rankings, and World Bank's country classification by income. Dataset can be used for any Rio 2016 Olympic games related analysis and any classical economic models.

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.

Abbreviations as per Table 1.

Throughout modern Olympic history, the 100 meter sprint is generally regarded as the most high profile and popular event of each Summer Games. The men's event has been included in every Olympics, while the women's event has been included since 1928. Athletes from the United States have won both events more than any other nation, with sixteen victories in the men's race and nine in the women's, although Jamaica has emerged as a sprinting superpower since the millennium. Despite having a population of less than three million people, Jamaica has dominated this event since 2008, claiming 15 of the 30 medals on offer. While measurements were not as accurate in earlier years, the men's time has fallen from 12 seconds in 1896, to 9.63 seconds in 2012, while the women's has fallen from 12.2 seconds in 1928 to 10.72 in 2020. Since the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, the gold medal times have remained below ten seconds for men, and eleven seconds for women (although altitude allowed for many new records to be set at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, which is 2.2km above sea level). World's fastest man The only athlete to ever win three Olympic golds in the 100m sprint was Jamaica's Usain Bolt, who also set the current world record of 9.58 seconds in 2009. In 2016, Bolt even became the first athlete to ever win a "triple-triple" in sprinting, by claiming gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m in three consecutive Olympics; however his 2008 gold medal in the 4x100m was rescinded in 2017 when a teammate tested positive for banned substances. Despite this, Bolt is widely considered to be the greatest sprinter of all time, with eight gold medals to his name, winning every Olympic final in which he participated. Interestingly, Bolt's right leg is half an inch shorter than his left due to scoliosis, which means that his left foot spends approximately 14 percent more time on the ground when running; biomechanical scientists have failed to conclude whether this has helped or hindered Bolt in his career. Bolt retired in 2017 at the age of thirty. World's fastest woman The fastest woman of all time was Florence Griffith-Joyner, whose world record of 10.49 seconds has stood since 1988. "Flo-Jo" also set an Olympic record of 10.62 seconds in 1988 (often given as 10.52, but with a wind assistance of +1.0 seconds); this record stood for 33 years before Elaine Thompson Herah topped it by 0.01 seconds at the Tokyo 2020 Games. Having also set the 200 meter world record at the 1988 Olympics, Griffith-Joyner's rapid improvement in these years saw a number of doping allegations from other high-profile athletes (including Ben Johnson*); the longevity of these records and the disproportionate number of women's records standing since the 1980s has kept these under suspicion. However, Griffith-Joyner was subjected to extra-rigorous testing at the time and passed all doping tests, attributing her athletic success to her new coach and an increased priority on strength training. Griffith-Joyner died suddenly in 1998, but her records have stood for over two decades thereafter; however, results from other athletes have progressively caught up to Flo-Jo's records, so it remains to be seen how long these records remain in place.