All-Time Olympic Games Medal Tally Analysis

home > events > olympic games > summer > medal count > all times

which country is most successful at the olympic games? these are the highest ranked countries in terms of total medals won when all summer games are considered (including summer games results). tokyo 2020) ). Two tables are presented, the first only lists the top countries based on total medals won, the second table takes into account how many Olympic games the country appeared in, averaging the total number of medals per Olympiad. a win in a team sport counts as a medal.

the united states has won the most medals

The United States has clearly won the most gold medals and the most medals overall, more than double the next ranked country (these figures include medals won in Tokyo 2020, updated August 2021). the soviet union/ussr, in second place, had fewer olympic appearances and actually won more medals on average (see second table). This top 10 includes a country that no longer exists (the Soviet Union), so their medal totals will obviously not increase, however China is expected to continue a rapid rise through the ranks. With the addition of 2021 data, China has moved from 11th (in 2008) to 9th (2012) to 7th (2016) to 6th (2021). the country that has attended the most games without a medal is monaco (21 olympic games), the country that has won the most medals without winning a gold medal is malaysia (0 gold, 8 silver, 5 bronze).

# combining the results of the ussr and the 1992 unified team (but russia is separate) * combining the results of germany, west germany, and the united germany team (but not east germany)

the ussr was the most successful on average

it seems unfair to rank countries based on total medals won when some countries have appeared in the olympic games many more times. The list below averages medals won per Olympiad, so the success of countries can be more directly compared. By this calculation, the former Soviet Union was the most successful country with 112 medals per appearance compared to the United States with 94 medals per appearance. However, also to be fair, the USSR can be considered a combination of many countries.

East Germany has been included separately from the German results, highlighting how much more successful East Germans were compared to the rest of the country. it is not surprising what a small state-sponsored doping program can do.

The ranking in this table is based on the average of total medals per Olympiad, although using either the total gold medals figure or the total of all medals, the order of the list is essentially the same.

# combining the results of the ussr and the 1992 unified team (but russia is separate) * combining the results of germany, west germany, and the united germany team (not east germany)

related pages

• you can see the list of medals of all the countries from which the above data is extracted.
• medal tables of all olympic games
• a comparison of different classification systems
• medals by country size: comparison of medals with country size (size and population)
• winners of the first Olympic gold medal from each country

old comments

Comments are closed on this page, though you can read some previous comments below that may answer some of your questions.

• i just found out that the ioc banned russia from participating in the olympics. so much for the idea of ​​”fair play”. i intend to completely boycott all olympic games forever. when you are so corrupt that you are willing to use sports for political purposes, especially when you are already the undisputed leader in that field, and most people are foolish enough to allow it, the end of your civilization is near. how good a sport can be when the second place team is eliminated from the competition, accused of wrong doings, which the established winner has been caught committing in the past. I suspect that the United States, under the ownership of pharmaceutical companies, not only has more and more sophisticated drugs, but has probably used doping rules to discriminate against other nations. If I were an Olympian and they told me that I couldn’t use my home country’s flag and that our national anthem couldn’t be played, I wouldn’t participate. If I were an American athlete, I would boycott moral principles, what is the value of participating in a rigged game? Of course, it would be hard to pass up the payday that comes with the medals. i predict the united states will do a total medal sweep (statistically speaking) and the games themselves will be boring. boycott the olympics (from jon, 2017)
  • you can boycott if you want and you can cry if you want, but politics played no part in its ban. more than half of the athletes tested are said to have tested positive for steroids. (aurelius72, 2017)
  • david (2013) pete, what county are there kids who can name over 40 countries? hardly any, please stop making yourself look like an idiot. what interests me is the subtlety of your ussr medal earnings compilation. How many countries did the USSR include during its rule? what was their population under that ruling? well, it had a population of around 293 million people in 1991 and spanned over a dozen different countries. just like you said, a higher population will lead to a higher number of medals, it sounds like they were just on par if not below us medal earning standards. uu. to be fair.
  • arizona65 david (2016) higher population does not make sense. India has almost a billion people and Michael Phelps has almost as many medals as India has won combined.
    • jacob sawyer arizona65 (2016) correction, he now has more than india has won in a single olympics. wow phelps! is consistently better than the average of 1.3 billion swimmers. that’s worth something.
    • anuj jacob sawyer (2016) dude, you’re still not comparing apples to apples. you have to see the amount of funding, infrastructure, training, etc. can the 1.3 billion in india get the same facilities that americans can avail?
    • william alexander plumbasket anuj (2017) you cant communicate with american folk my friend. Americans have always thought they are better than everyone else on the planet, I just laugh at them.
      • whites are victims william alexander plumbasket (2017) i am american and i laugh at them too. party in! black ‘mericuh william
      • alexander plumbasket (2017) because obviously we are… fedex routes william alexander plumbasket (2017). you laugh because he makes you nervous that we are… I want to apologize for that. I’m sorry. – lee jones william alexander plumbasket (2020) not as loud as we laugh at you
      • william alexander plumbasket jacob sawyer (2017) man, you’re thick. it’s because of the funding: gdp, what makes success, not the gene pool, the population, idiot. unless of course some americans think they are a superior race (lol). a certain other country had similar ideas in the last century, it didn’t end too well for them, it did now. American exceptionalism comes to mind. It is common knowledge that a percentage of the American population suffers from ‘delusions of grandeur’ – you are just one of those ignorant statistics.
      • chase sam william alexander plumbasket (2018) there is not one single american race if you haven’t been up to date with american news (which you don’t need to be) there is still a lot of racism and things that divide the different races of america
      • gary johnson william alexander plumbasket (2017) william, genetics is totally important to sports. why do you think blacks always dominate any sport related to track? but go ahead and ignore the science and brag about how wonderful the UK is falling apart and go to your own ethnicity
      • guankim jacob sawyer (2016) did it with traditional chinese cupping. that is forbidden?
        • grossman guankim (2016) clearly not. but he did it without traditional Chinese state-funded doping.
        • rahul biswas jacob sawyer (2016) okay americans are good at sports we get it but you live in a world of fools if you think you are a superior race or something just because you have more medals. a fish will live its whole life believing that it is an imbecile if you judge the intelligence of it by climbing trees. And why can’t the US produce enough scientists to run NASA and stop hiring Indian brains? I’m just saying…
        • etesvous stupidity? rahul biswas (2016) for belonging to such a smart group of people, i thought you would already know that american is not a race, he is a nationality. Americans are made up of many different races of people (including Indians). furthermore, the “indians” you claim to run nasa, are actually americans. you see, barring rare cases of exception, you have to be an American. citizen to work at NASA.
        • chase sam rahul biswas (2018) well that last point also comes down to the school system and how the government doesn’t fund schools as much as it should. Asian and Indian parents tend to push their children much harder than Americans because there are other ways to be successful besides doing well in school and being smart. Americans don’t end up in poverty when they don’t do well in school lol
        • rmclarkjr. Rahul Biswas (2017) India is a filthy mess. they need the british to come back and clean the place up again.
        • da dude rahul biswas (2017) most of these “Indians” are American. America is not even close to the white people you know…
        • the son of a bitch rahul biswas (2016) usa is the only superpower for a reason. I’m just saying
        • rmclarkjr. son of a bitch (2017) the rest of the world should know when they’ve been conquered, either directly or indirectly…
        • georgios kappos motherfugger (2016) wow… 300 years as a superpower and there is the “reason” behind it… imagine what greeks, egyptians, mongols, persians (yes, that’s iran), ottomans, The Chinese and a dozen others can now say that at one time or another they have run empires for thousands of years. they must have had a bigger “reason”, to say the least. 🙂
        • paul homsy georgios kappos (2017) georgios, times have changed. things move much faster. these ancient civilizations and cultures would not have lasted as long in a modern age. finding fault without thinking before posting is a sign of envy. typical of critical people who attack any subject. America is like the gentle giant in a schoolyard full of punks. there are times when the gentle giant kicks butt. It seems that the United States is always under attack. The United States is much less than 300 years old as a “superpower,” but it stands in a universe that is moving at least 100 times faster than it was a thousand years ago, if not 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. Nobody is perfect, but America has done a lot of good and it is disappointing to see all the criticism. Americans can dig heels like anyone else and are more self-sufficient than anyone else. you should never forget that. It’s what this country did. I’d be more grateful if you had a sense of the size, complexity, and efficiency of American infrastructure that you can’t interpret in one or two short visits. It takes years to understand the phenomenon that is America.
        • rmclarkjr. paul homsy (2017) 100% the truth. Now who wants a beating?
        • william alexander plumbasket georgios kappos (2017) not even 300 years as a ‘superpower’, more like 100 years. Americans suffer from delusions of grandeur, always have. however, I agree with some of what you say.
        • abhishek srivastava william alexander plumbasket (2020) i guess exactly the rise of both the ussr and the ussr was in 1918 the end of the first world war, 3 superpowers with the uk losing status in 1945 and the ussr in 1991 now with china rising as a superpower in 2020. america can celebrate but now they have a tough competitor and will use india here for the benefit
        • james buza william alexander plumbasket (2017) we have clearly made those delusions come true
        • paul homsy william alexander plumbasket (2017) mr. plumbing basket the british have won many wars and battles because they are loyal and disciplined troops, but they invariably always lost in parliament due to their own “delusions of grandeur”, the disdain they harbored around the world for those they had fought against and that they were not exactly like them. to them. a sense of pride bordering on insane provinciality. the distance they kept. never mingle and always think of england as “home”. highly commendable but clearly showing in colonial times the inability to truly leave their shores with an open mind. As for the great cultures that lasted thousands of years, times were different and nothing traveled as fast as today. your contemptuous attitude towards the united states is the purest reflection of your lack of gratitude. America saved Europe twice. at least take the right path and show the class you think you have by being grateful. you are a stupid poser. bar stool prophets are a dime a dozen. most of the last two or three generations have been more open-minded, they have traveled better, it is not the miles you log but the eyes you use to see, the new generations in general see the world with a very different perspective than the colonialists of the old era of which you seem to be a vestige without much rudder. fortunately, the new generations of your country and most of the others have evolved far beyond their current capacities, which they demonstrate by being many more citizens of the world than people like you ever were, regardless of the distant moons under the that they traveled they have joined the world, while those who wallow in their perceived past glory do their country a disservice in their gross inability to see beyond their local shores.
        • batman georgios kappos (2016) you just did the same thing, assuming nasa only hires indian brains? you correct about assuming it’s a master race, because countries around the world play different sports. the olympics are very western, most sports are popular with westerners. And if the Indians are apparently so smart, how come they haven’t started their own space program?
        • gyan batman (2017) although i agree with your first line but just FYI an answer for your last line batman… either you don’t read news apart from the western world or you were asleep for the last 5 years otherwise it wouldn’t have undermined india and india has a space agency called isro just google it and also has its own indigenous space programs including chandrayaan-1 (mission to the moon) in 2008 and mangalyaan (mission to mars ) in 2014 became the first country in Asia to successfully reach Mars in orbit and at the cheapest cost, so please correct your data
        • rmclarkjr. gyan (2017) calls a mountbatten back!
        • william alexander plumbasket batman (2017) nasa has people working from all over the world; it would be obvious to suggest otherwise. if they were just Americans, well, I wouldn’t want to imagine that outcome.
        • william alexander plumbasket motherfugger (2017) without british colonization – well, you’d still be wiping your butt off leaves. I hate to say this but I really wish my ancestors hadn’t colonized America at all, you’d still be a good & quiet country then. only a complete idiot would imagine that they are superior human beings, oh look, only an american would think that. it was only last century that certain people from another country thought they were ‘superior human beings’; It didn’t end too well for them, according to the history books 😉 maybe there is a lesson you need to learn american people. have a nice day 🙂
        • matttempco william alexander plumbasket (2017) oh and we kicked their butt in the revolutionary war
        • matttempco william alexander plumbasket (2017) what would you have done without the united states in the world wars?
        • fedex routes matttempco (2017) speaking german lol
        • eric william alexander plumbasket (2018) brother, the united states is made up of many nationalities. more than almost all the countries in the world. And yes, America is better at sports, except soccer. but we lack in other areas. we don’t think we’re the best at everything. we just take pride in what we do.
        • yoyoyo william alexander plumbasket (2017) no, no, no, the British, French and Spanish colonized America.
        • rmclarkjr. william alexander plumbasket (2017) don’t ask for help next time…
        • the friend william alexander plumbasket (2017) now, who is the arrogant fool who suffers from “delusions of grandeur”, as you called it, citing another probably arrogant fool.
        • paul homsy william alexander plumbasket (2017) and who is considered so sexy now? when you say “some Americans think they are a superior race”. Unlike many Europeans, and you in particular, hardly any Americans consider themselves to be part of a superior race. I think he cornered the market on that. you are projecting your own feelings. great fault. Americans are much easier to get along with than a cocky idiot thinks. you impose your own limitations with your narrow views and real feelings of superiority. stop collecting your information from the tabloids. we didn’t invent them… you did.
        • swagat rath rahul biswas (2016) ignorance is bliss. do you have any data on how many indians are working for nasa? do not be guided by pesudeo patriotic-social posts.
        • william huang arizona65 (2019) 22% of people in india are in poverty. Only dedicated athletes can attempt to make it to the Olympics and many people have to work hard for a chance at life. this shows that india actually has a smaller percentage of people who can actually compete and want to.
        • william alexander plumbasket arizona65 (2017) i will make this easy for you as you are american. There are some determining factors that make America a medal winning leader, are you ready? “gdp/funding/academies” – it really is as simple as that. now some Americans will say they are superior human beings (arrogance/ignorance) or whatever you want to call it. now, certain individuals, from another country, had similar ideas last century. as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, it didn’t end too well for them. maybe there is a lesson for you guys. It seems that a moderate percentage of Americans suffer from ‘delusions of grandeur’ – it shows, especially after reading your comments. have a nice day 🙂
        • skandh soni arizona65 (2016) I just want to add a logical insight regarding the medal count. why there are so many medals in some sports like swimming and only one gold in team sports like hockey and soccer. I think there should be some kind of parity between these medals. in sports that require the contribution of the whole team, they give only one gold while some sports, like swimming, are giving many golds. I think there should be some parity regarding the weight of gold medals so that a gold in football or hockey is not compared to a gold in any particular type of swimming sport. because the effort that the whole team has made to win a gold in a team sport is much more than the effort of a single athlete in a sport like swimming
        • kut thomas skandh soni (2016) i don’t agree… being that football, basketball, hockey or whatever is a heavy team sport, swimming and track require more because there are different regions within it or categories. . you don’t get a medal for the best header in football or the best dunk or the best check in hockey. however, the best 100m butterfly swimmer and the best javelin swimmer require different skills and are not played in a game format.
        • dencio skandh soni (2016) is definitely right bro!
        • ricardo arizona65 (2016) funding counts more than population, something the united states does in abundance…others obviously can’t compete if they don’t have the means for funding.
        • niico100 arizona65 (2016) is not meaningless, but it is an important variable (there are others, such as money spent on sports, and whether you are a rich democracy). India is not a rich democracy, so it does not have a lot of money to spend on sports. a gold medal usually costs around 1 million dollars of investment.
        • brilliantidiot niico100 (2019) india has money. if they took some of the money spent on cricket and invested it in sports academies, who knows what the results will be.
        • georgios kappos son of a bitch (2016) omg…i keep seeing your comments…hello friend…greek here and of course ruined as a nation! imagine what… your american institutions -ups international- name us bankrupt, but we own less than 1% than you. so let’s be honest, there’s only one thing you’re clearly better at… guns and the willingness to use them on innocent children to secure your financial interests. from there, the equations are really easy to follow…and yes, they lead to superpowers!
        • brian holland niico100 (2016) although your point is clear, you are wrong. if you mean the united states to compare it with india… neither country is a democracy. The United States is a republic and always has been. read the oath of allegiance. “to the republic it represents”
        • american worker brian holland (2016) there is no true democratic country in the world, a real democracy is where every civilian in said democracy votes and decides government policy, which if it were in place today would literally be impossible to achieve next to nothing because of the plethora of differing opinions that would make the political process impractical and next to impossible the united states is a democratic republic which is the same thing and is a base from which all democratic governments use it is neither neither a true democracy nor a true republic need the best parts of both to create a government with the ability to engage people as a democracy and have the greater simplicity and efficiency of a republic.
        • pix042 david (2014) the united states took land from indigenous people, so we don’t know how things might have turned out in that territory if one culture hadn’t subjugated another.
        • jacob sawyer pix042 (2016) we cherokee indians are extremely good at javelin throwing and ping pong. Watch out….2020….for the Native American Athlete Team! lol (yes I’m Cherokee)
        • alexander delarge jacob sawyer (2016) if you were Cherokee, you would simply call yourself Cherokee or Native, not Indian.
        • talmadge williams pix042 (2016) oh i know thorpe has football records too and he was native american…can you imagine if native americans hadn’t been conquered by europeans…imagine a man of 7 feet tall wrestling in the olympics…yes, native americans were tall people. along the east coast from hudson bay to florida. to the gulf of mexico to mexico were these giants
        • melanie talmadge williams (2016) my maternal great-grandmother was a full blood choctaw, and she was very short, less than 5′. Choctaws were generally short people. quite a few Native American tribes were people of short stature. my family is from the coast of the gulf of mexico, all its branches.
        • gillette00 david (2016) if everyone has the idea that a larger population gives you a better chance of getting olympic medals, explain how the few most populous countries india, indonesia, pakistan, bangladesh perennially did so poorly .
        • francis gillette00 (2016) population is important, but gdp is more important. Putting these 2 things together, you can easily find a formula to predict (at least explain) the differences in medal counts in different countries.
        • grossman francis (2016) agrees that gdp should be viewed more favorably than population. Something to Consider However, many medalists from poorer nations train in the United States or attend American universities. therefore, they have access to the same training and facilities as American athletes.
        • badd_kungfu francis (2016) so what happens when you add the fact that team usa. uu. is not sponsored by your government, while many of your competitors are?
        • francis badd_kungfu (2016) people, like team usa. uu, which are not sponsored by the states, receive a much more generous financial reward. advantages and disadvantages in both systems.
        • ankush sawant david (2016) there are many countries where people cannot name countries. Just because you don’t know doesn’t mean nobody knows. you americans didn’t even know vietnam until the war 😂
        • eli ankush sawant (2016) lmao why did we need to do it? it’s like a king who knows the names of all the peasants in the kingdom, and then out of nowhere the peasant threatens to move to another kingdom which threatens the size of our kingdom and so we take note of him
        • ricardo eli (2016) but you’re not a king hahaha
        • ian (2016) why do you include west germany in the germany totals but not east germany? this seems arbitrary. East Germany was unified with West Germany in Germany, so if you accept West German medals, you logically have to accept East German medals.
        • nick ian (2016) ian, i can see an argument for including west german medals with united germany as in effect the german state continued between 1945-89. However, including East Germans as well would be unfair, as in many events East and West Germany together would have had twice as many competitors as other countries, distorting the results e.g. Athletics: Six German competitors per event compared to three from the USA. uu. or the ussr. In any event, East Germany’s medal success is so completely tainted by systemic drug abuse that I’m sure Germany would not want to be credited with these medals. Many former East German athletes, particularly women, are still paying the price for state-sponsored abuse of their bodies.
        • mohamed benjamin hoffmeister (2016) just because you have the privilege to publish doesn’t mean you also have the privilege to publish false accusations… firstly don’t compare kenya to any of the countries you mentioned… kenya doesn’t It has the financial power that the others have to have a sophisticated anti-doping system…. but what is more important is that each of the countries mentioned have had their athletes’ medals stripped for doping at the Olympic Games… .now read this not a single kenyan has ever been stripped of his olympic medal…as for doping, yes kenyan athletes of no particular value in athletics or recognition have been doped…and also every other country has but none of our medal winners…so please be careful what you say about our athletes.
        • beau ravn ap gwyddon benjamin hoffmeister (2016) very strange to include australia as a ‘largest doping nation’. we have less than 1/10th of the population of the united states at about 25 million compared to 350 million and i think we’ve only had 3 doping charges from the ioc. Australia is historically one of the cleanest nations when it comes to doping as well as being one of the most successful medal winning nations per capita of population ranking 7th in the world overall and No. 1 in the world for nations with populations of more than 10 million. . The United States ranks 36th in the world in medals won per capita of population out of 64 nations. the Russian Federation ranks 41st and China 56th.
        • tunasalad (2017) someone tell me why russia is listed as the soviet union
        • rob admin tunasalad (2017) are not, ussr/soviet union and russia are listed separately. you can see them both in the full list that has been recently updated: http://www.topendsports.com…
        • darkhorseski(too many upvotes) (2016) i think there is a problem with the average graph in that there were far fewer medals to win in the early olympics before the ussr participated. you would have to weigh the number of possible medals in each Olympiad before calculating the average.
        • rob admin darkhorseski(too many upvotes) (2016) I agree, taking into account the number of medals available would improve this analysis… I just have to find the information and do the calculations.
        • darkhorseski(too many upvotes) rob (2016) yes, you will need a total number of medals awarded by olympics. and those have to be real results because trying to shorten things would throw the numbers off thanks to the fact that the first olympics didn’t have gold/silver/bronze… and some sports, like judo, award 2 bronzes…
        • world rob (2019) you forgot to mention that during the 70’s and 80’s the united states was not allowed to have professional athletes. the soviet union allowed them and that drastically affected the loot of medals for the united states. that skewed the results, so ee. uu. still has the most impressive loot. why didn’t you mention this? are you canadian or something?
        • carlos mendoza (2015) your website is very interesting. i agree with you in considering the ex-ussr (soviet union) as the best team of all time considering that they only attended 10 olympic editions. On the other hand, why not consider Germany as a unique team after its reunification, if so, it is the third successful country with 400 gold medals? Congratulations again and greetings from Lima – Peru.
        • jacob sawyer carlos mendoza (2016) keep in mind that the success of the ussr had to do in part with the control of around 15 countries through force and doping/forced use of drugs sponsored by the status.
        • not to downplay their success for disrespect, but yes, their stats are nowhere comparable to the steady and consistent success of countries like the us. uu. and Chinese.
        • realitycheck jacob sawyer (2016) but, that doping though.
        • jon carson (2016) oh, the irony. just reading all the comments and one must laugh. instead of comparing one country with another. look at the years where the global climate has been anything but peaceful and yet as a group we can come together on a world stage and bask in the ideals of the best man he has to offer in spirit and in physical abilities. Granted many have been “cheated” and the standards of what is acceptable have changed. so much so that many athletes 50 years ago would not have passed today’s doping regulations if they had been used back then. stop looking with a finite mindset, but rather see the showcase of humanity simplified and unified under one roof, regardless of race, region, creed, religion, or anything else that might lead us somewhere. we are human and we can cohabit that is the beauty of these games. regardless of the number of medals. We all win when we strive as a race in the greatest race of all… the human race.
        • brool (2020) omg this is great I never knew this because I’m learning about it in socialology
        • maxwell (2020) the numbers speak for themselves!
        • vlad rangotchev (2019) thanks for the good article. I went ahead and looked at medals per capita because countries with 10 or a hundred times the population of my country have fewer medals. i was born in bulgaria and i am proud of how high they rank with a population of only 7 million people. This is quite embarrassing for countries like the United States, Russia, France, and Germany.
        • nice krypollo (2019) good job with a completely random stat to put russia on top. America is the most athletic country in the world by a wide margin. get over it.
        • lilly good krypollo (2020) nz is the best face it
        • drizzt228 (2018) athletes in the ussr were helped by government sponsored performance enhancement programs and their athletes were basically professional athletes. they were given government jobs that allowed them to earn money to practice at their Olympic events throughout the year
        • joker (2017) the men who built america started the whole world motivated. who invented cars? who started the railway? who built the refineries? who invented the television? who invented computers? which led to a battle over who was better… handhelds now? we [us] may not have been the first but we definitely started the world we live in today!!!!!
        • brilliantidiot joker (2019) railway: the british automobil: germany tv; us radio:italy, marconi polish pharmacist and inventor ignacy Łukasiewicz established an oil refinery in jasło, then part of the austro-hungarian empire (now in poland) in 1854. electricity: ben franklin
        • dalton corbin (2017) united states is obviously the best idiot. the statistics prove it. hahahaha use use use
        • hank w (sypher117) (2017) can we even count the ussr? I mean, it’s 2018 and these guys are still trying to get away with doping. imagine what they got away with then.
        • rahul biswas (2017) wow so many people were upset by my previous comment months ago. no wonder trump is your president. Anyway, back to how smart Indians are, IRO, the Indian Space Research Organization sent an orbiter to Mars at a cost of 1/10 of what NASA did. oh, that burns, sorry. And for the ignorant Brits, who don’t even know we have a space program, let me ask you a question, do you have your own space program? and the colonization of india yeah i’m gonna get to that aren’t you ashamed of directly causing the famines in bengal and all that? oh, and please come talk to me when you have the heart to return our kohinoor diamond. yes, the mighty queen’s kohinoor diamond was stolen from india. so that’s the britain story… apply burnol to burned areas please. 😅😅
        • bad (2016) Olympic event medals from years ago are all tainted by the possibility of drug use. even today the whole world is aware of the cheating that takes place and not only by athletes but also by coaches, drug inspectors and even nations. people like the great paavo nurmi, winner of 10 olympic gold medals in the 1920s, used a drug containing the male hormone testosterone to enhance their performance and even today’s ultimate drug users, the need to ‘win all costa’ will mean that some athletes will stoop to taking drugs if they are available. the east german olympic team and i also suspect most soviet union teams of the past were certainly using enhanced drugs so using the gold/silver/bronze medal count as some kind of sports league table should taken with a large pinch of salt.
        • manuel falla (2016) good table, a much fairer comparison. you only need to update the numbers for russia, they have won 149 gold medals in total and not 147.
        • amw (2016) wow!!! how reading this article turned into a pointless commentary on race. Is everyone going to add religion and politics next?!?
        • arizona65 (2016) if life wasn’t a competition, why did god call us the human race?
        • justin dismore (2016) this is what it comes down to… america is the shiznit and every other country sucks… qatar shouldn’t have the most medals because it’s the richest country in the world. it doesn’t mean anything cause they never win so what happens is every country sucks except america…make america great again!!!!!!
        • jillimy jilikers (2016) the unfair advantage that the united states, britain, australia, canada, and many western countries (but these in particular) have is the greater mix of races that produces the best athletes. add to that the superior financing and infrastructure, the stable environment and there is no comparison. they (predominantly white Northern Europeans) only take credit for what is contributed by a mixture of African, South American, Asian and Eastern European genes. when you take all this into account, they should be even more dominant. It still doesn’t match the achievements of the Soviet Union/Russia (which was a mix of much more similar people), China, and many other countries.
        • brilliantidiot jillimy jilikers (2019) united states is one of the most cosmopolitan places in the world. yes, they have serious racial problems. so do other countries
        • motherday (2016) wow. two sentences in and it becomes political. nice. why bother with the olympics or even a coke song? no one really cares anymore. if they ever did. how did we go from naming countries to subjugating native americans? wow…
        • godisalljust (2016) what about medals per capita? Wouldn’t that be a more accurate measure of success?
        • rob admin beau ravn ap gwyddon (2016) on this site I analyzed total medals won all time relative to population size, whereas the site you referenced only compares for each Olympiad.
        • benjamin hoffmeister (2016) so germany is #3 (ger+frg+utg) and #11 (east germany) on his list (east germany would still be #9 in the gold ranking) // by the way , some athletes won medals for east germany and germany -> so why split them? -> if you add them up there will be 3 nations with more than 1000 medals each…
        • vargaati79 (2016) weighted medals per capita of all time: finland is the best 🙂 lol
        • nick (2016) there is no country in the world called gb. I guess everyone is thinking of the UK. the ignorance of the idiots who organized the British team is mind-boggling. I am ashamed that the good people of Northern Ireland have been treated so poorly.
        • rob admin nick (2016) the british olympic association and the ioc refer to the uk team as great britain, even though it is the team of great britain and northern ireland. The team also represents the Crown Dependencies (Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) and all but three of the British Overseas Territories.
        • sabin bhattarai (2015) being such a small nation compared to the united states and soviet union team gb is in fourth place so britain is great.
        • brian (2015) I am an American and I am proud of our success, I am also proud of all the people in the world for doing well. gb for being so much smaller, australia for having an even smaller population than gb, wow some impressive totals
        • please (2015), please make a winner of the ten medals, not a country, an athlete, male or female (I’m Danish, I need it in school)
        • aleks (2013) hehe, sweden and hungary here is a great success for these nations, because compared to the “superpowers” of 50-100 million people (I didn’t talk about china), sweden and hungary are about 10 millions. people, and last century its population moved between 7-10 million. this is what we can call real sporting nations! congratulations to hungary and sweden for these impressive achievements!!!!!!
        • remember: November! (2016) medals per athlete really show which nation is more committed!
        • atl (2016) rank country medals population population per medal 1 finland 303 5,407,040 17,845 2 sweden 491 9,490,683 19,329 3 hungary 489 9,962,000 20,372 4 denmark 191 5,580,516 29,217 5 bahamas 12 353,658 29,471 6 norway 152 5,005,700 32,932 7 bulgaria 215 7,364,570 34,253 8 jamaica 73 2,705,827 37,066 9 estonia 34 1,318,005 38,764 10 new zealand 113 4,432,620 39,226 11 east germany 409 16,111,000 39,391 12 switzerland 189 7,870,100 41,640 13 australia 494 22,880,619 46,317 14 cuba 217 11,241,161 51,802 15 grenada 2 110,821 55,410 16 netherlands 281 16,731,770 59,543 17 romania 305 19,042,936 62,435 18 bermuda 1 64,237 64,237 19 czechoslovakia 143 10,318,000 72,153 20 trinidad and tobago 18 1,317,714 73,206 21 belgium 148 10,951,266 73,995 22 great britain 836 62,262,000 74,476 23 iceland 4 319,575 79,893 24 slovenia 23 2,057,540 89,458 25 france 702 65,350,000 93,091 26 greece 115 10,787,690 93,806 27 Austria 87 8,452,835 97,159 28 Tonga 1 103,036 103,036 29 Mongolia 26 2,736.80 0 105,261 30 italy 573 60,776,531 106,067 31 virgin islands 1 106,405 106,405 32 latvia 19 2,070,371 108,966 33 belarus 84 9,461,400 112,635 34 netherlands antilles 2 227,049 113,524 35 yugoslavia 90 10,348,473 114,983 36 canada 294 34,771,400 118,270 37 united states 2,496 313,382,000 125,553 38 lithuania 25 3,192,800 127,712 39 Germany 605 81 831 000 135 257 40 Poland 279 38 501 000 137 996
        • the average number of bills (2016) per Olympiad is stupid. 2016 awards more than 900 medals. as an example. the 1936 olympics awarded around 300 in total. if anyone wanted to bother with a truer comparison, then make percentages of the total awarded.
        • rob admin bill (2016) comparing the average number of medals per Olympiad was better than just total medals, his suggestion to use percentage of total is even better. I’ll update these tables after rio so I can do that analysis too.
        • niico100 (2016) yes, the ussr was the most successful, largely due to its widespread use of banned drugs. just like russia & china today – drug traps.
        • chris_frost1979 niico100 (2016) of the last two olympics, 11 gold medalists from russia lost their gold medal because they were found to be drug addicts. guess who they share that rank one number with? the united states of a….
        • so yes russians do drugs and cheat but historically no other (successful) country was really honest either and america is head and shoulders above russia and east germany when it comes to performance enhancing drug use .
        • matthew (2016) the united states has 300 million more inhabitants than australia! it’s fair that you have 2400 medals, which is 5 times more than us, but you have 13.5 times the population. clearly australia is the best!
        • benjamin matthew hoffmeister (2016) sweden has fewer inhabitants and more medals won
        • guankim matthew (2016) the secret is the kangaroo steak and the aging beer!
        • jacob matthew sawyer (2016) clearly? gold medal stats don’t increase just based on population increase. what’s wrong. you had a fleeting idea and then post it as fact even though there is no evidence, zero chance to prove it, and zero actual information you just provided.
        • all you did was put some black pixels on my white screen in a certain formation, that’s all I can really give you credit for.
        • jakey (2016) hey gb you are the best!
        • gbgb jakey (2016) considering our climate, the sheer lack of facilities, that’s quite impressive… I hope the poorest countries with their athletes who struggle to achieve their goal every day… start to climb the ladder… make it much more interesting, maybe it’s an illusion, but sport can change things!
        • daryl jakey (2016) how is gb the best, when clearly the usa leads the pack with thousands of medals, 3 times the number of medals in fewer games than gb… the usa rules all – superiority!
        • pete daryl (2016) i think you’re kidding yourself daryl. If you prorate the medals against the head of the population, Team USA is doing very poorly. it is quite typical of an American not to recognize anyone from outside their country. they only know where iraq is when they invaded it. when he lived in the united states, children’s knowledge of geography was embarrassing and unbelievable, as they could name less than 15% of the countries on a world map. need I say more?
        • james willey pete (2016) while the size of the population gives you the potential to get more talent, it is not a guarantee that you will win more medals. otherwise china and india would be untouchable right? If you ask me, GDP and the popularity of a sport in the country in question are much more powerful factors in the medal count. that your country is able (gdp) and willing (popularity of the sport) to support the & diary of your athletes; training needs, without them having to cut large amounts of time from preparation efforts to support themselves or their families, is far more important to earning medals than having another 1/1,000,000,000 talent residing in a person without access to proper training or equipment/amenities. phelps wouldn’t be who he is without the people around him, who not only taught him, but allowed him to live a life that didn’t require him to give up swimming to help support his family. quite ironic how you try to paint someone as delusional and short-sighted, while using a method of determination that amounts to next to nothing. Kids where you come from shouldn’t be taught critical thinking skills, I’m sure if I visited just 15% I could analyze that you’re full of that. need I say more?
        • grossman james willey (2016) the popularity of sport is an important factor that I think people ignore. I can’t speak for many other countries, but in the united states, you’ll find many of our best athletes in the nba and nfl, who don’t use their skills for the olympics (except for olympic basketball which we’ve mastered throughout the history) . For example, the United States once did extremely well in Olympic boxing. This is not the case. With the sport dying out in the US, I think many who could box at an elite level are taking the soccer/basketball route.
        • tellis pete (2016) the united states has more than 4 times the gold medal ratio of gb, which is close to the population ratio. And the reason why Americans lack knowledge of world geography is due to the fact that the country is so big that they rarely need to worry about other countries. compared to most others, where a trip through multiple countries would be the equivalent of passing through a couple of states. plus our neighboring countries are places most Americans want to avoid.
        • ankush sawant tellis (2016) your argument about lack of knowledge about other countries shows how ignorant Americans are
        • jacob sawyer ankush sawant (2016) are americans ignorant? Aren’t you using websites like facebook, youtube and gmail/google? Those are American creations. And even if you don’t use those websites, right now you’re using the internet, which was invented by the us military. uu. when it was called arpanet.
        • have you ever seen a hollywood movie? your name ankush makes me think you are of indian descent, doesn’t it? so even your own “bollywood” scene is just an imitation of hollywood…but are we the ignorant ones? why are we so damn influential if we’re ignorant?
        • by the way, the plane. have you ever heard of that? yeah… the wright brothers did that too, in north carolina. have you ever heard of that? we have, it’s in the usa uu.
        • how is it that we are completely dominating the olympics every time if we are missing something important in our brain? how come
        • oh, and the computer you’re using… probably American. we created the apple corporation (they’re not the most ignorant people, right?). do you use iphones or ipads or something? I bet you or someone you care about does, and I bet they benefit too! ohh, that must hurt.
        • The reason people like you think Americans are stupid is because of something you saw on TV or some little clip of something. if you really come to the usa uu. and you talk to people, you will find a different story.
        • we know how to build strong communities of happy and successful people, we know how to throw our trash in the trash, we know how to say “hello” to people as we pass by on the sidewalk, we know how to focus our minds and create great things without massive corruption and general chaos.
        • Try it in your country and then let’s talk about who is ignorant.
        • try to get the average Indian person to put away their trash or respect a woman as equal to a man.
        • Does your country innovate? Do you create things that help and change the world? your? even if you do it, so do we.
        • I’ve been to madras and cochin, and I know it’s not half the terrors of Indian culture and city life.
        • come visit usa We won’t lick our lips or look you up and down to decide how much your outfit is worth and how much of your stuff we can steal.
        • guankim jacob sawyer (2016) united states is made up of the best brains from other countries they attracted. I dare say Americans are poached people.
        • james willey guankim (2016) lol! why do you come here, guan? If we are all so ignorant and stupid, why should they come to get the higher education we offer?
        • there’s a lot of ignorant people here, but if you think that’s true for “Americans” like ankush does, and not the Chinese & Indians, you are dumber than the people you are imagining.
        • spencer bringhurst ankush sawant (2016) america is a great country and easily the best one to live in. i laugh when you all talk about us medals versus population when china and india fare much worse on that score. . I don’t care what country you live in, America is even bigger. It is a blessing to live in America
        • guankim spencer bringhurst (2016) now here’s a toad in the well!
        • tyler kaye ankush sawant (2016) ankush, as an American and someone who has lived in various countries; scotland, france, india, singapore and tellis’s argument is not so far-fetched. it is completely illogical to assume that an American would know the geographic or political composition of each country. Just because someone from one country knows something about the United States that is not reciprocated is not a fair comparison. people learn and remember things that are important to their lifestyle and environment.
        • e. aja ankush sawant (2016) all i know is my country cuba is great we are ranked highest in all time olympic games medal count (summer olympics) against all spanish speaking countries in the world , including mexico-argentina-colombia-venezuela despite the fact that our population is very small compared to theirs, moreover, I do not agree that a gold medal costs around $1 million investment because I was a Cuban national champion at one point in my youth and i trained (track and field) in normal shoes and home made shorts for years before i could get one from the communist party the only advantage was being in a school for medal wannabes where i had three guaranteed daily meals (I am now a US citizen). what is your opinion on this…?
        • guankim tellis (2016) china is even larger in population and land mass. its people have traveled a lot and can beat the united states in geography
        • jacob sawyer guankim (2016) well traveled? less than 3% of Chinese citizens have a passport. and more than 35% of Americans have a passport. I am American and have personally been to 72 countries. I know tons of Americans who travel. there is no need to have a competition anyway, but since you have shared false data like everyone else in this comment area, I have no choice but to show you some stats to prove you completely wrong. 3% of Chinese passport holders and 35% of US passport holders. not even close.
        • philly rampardson jacob sawyer (2016) approximately 40,710,000 Chinese passport holders approximately 111,615,000 US passport holders
        • guankim jacob sawyer (2016) some twenty million Chinese travel as tourists around the world. Europe welcomes you. America welcomes you. the nihonjin welcomes you. many countries rolled out their red carpets to woo the Chinese. It’s common knowledge that not many Americans travel outside of North America.
        • jacob sawyer pete (2016) michael phelps (american) currently has 3 times as many gold medals as gb right now combined. in his career he has 25 medals, 21 of them gold. inventing statistics on the ability of countries to know geography? It would seem silly to someone like me that you don’t have real data, but I guess when you’re so ignorant that you don’t even know what you don’t know, then you’re caught in a trap. any more questions guys?
        • guankim jacob sawyer (2016) yes. why are you jingoistic and intolerant?
        • benjamin hoffmeister jacob sawyer (2016) germany doesn’t have much more population, but it does have many more medals :p
        • dant (2015) is a bit incorrect to include separate entries for russia, ussr and omit the results for the russian empire. the ussr was the official successor to the russian empire, and the russian federation (russia) is the official successor to the ussr, even in the ioc, if i’m not mistaken. but certainly in the un and fifa.
        • joss (2016) eastern germany and the soviet union (as well as russia today) were under a state-sponsored steroid and testosterone doping program during those “golden years”. I don’t see how you can count any of those medals that were won by cheating.
        • georgios kappos joss (2016) in the same way that the medals of the united states are counted when 80% of the proven doping scandals are directly attributed to the great dreamteam of the basketball country that in 2004 threatened to withdraw from the competition when a doping control was requested

        >

        • joss georgios kappos (2016) the united states is the country that promoted doping tests. The IOC is corrupt and only interested in making money for its own individual executive board. they bankrupt the countries that organize the games and support and legitimize totalitarian regimes that murder and imprison their own people. like oh let’s say russia and china for example.
        • United States detains the police of its athletes and tried to prevent doping. if an athlete in the usa uu. cheats, it is his own individual decision. in russia and china the deception is 100% directed and sponsored by their government. their athletes have no choice.
        • Guankim Joss (2016) China and Russia are not for the United States to legitimize. they do not owe their existence to us. he has made accusations based on his cold war mentality. actually, only orangutans make that kind of noise.
        • joss guankim (2016) the ioc is the international olympic committee, not the united states. you should read what is said before responding. the ioc dangerously validated adolph hither’s regime in 1936. fast forward to february 2014 when they did the same thing to putin’s regime which before that was beginning to fail. He then proceeded to attack and annex Ukraine. china used its recent olympics to jail all of its civil rights lawyers. most are now completely gone. China also unintentionally displaced hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed their homes to build its Olympic venues.
        • jeremy guankim (2016) sorry guankim but after reading your comments i have to say an orangutan would put you to shame. your comments are very silly. however, ignorance is bliss, friend! ignorance is bliss.
        • georgios kappos joss (2016) “bankrupt countries legitimizing totalitarian regimes that murder and imprison their own people” i guess as opposed to “bankrupt united states legitimizing totalitarian regimes (worldwide) that murder and imprison to its own people (and when we can’t lend a hand… or two… or 10,000 long live the United States Army).
        • georgios kappos joss (2016) i wonder if you want to change your comment after the latest revelations by wada andused about “good” doping. by the way, it is interesting that the health problems that allow such a “good” doping arise only in us, great britain, german teams…
        • jacob sawyer georgios kappos (2016) oh please usa dream team. uu. It could be anyone at any time, even other American NBA teams! Doping or not has nothing to do with your success. doping doesn’t help accuracy, teamwork or attitude, which our players excel at.
        • georgios kappos jacob sawyer (2016) hmmm… ok… so as long as you have the best team in talent or strategy or whatever… a little doping is ok. interesting idea!