It’s the first stalemate in Summer Games history, and it took a nail-biting U.S. women's basketball win in the final action of Paris 2024 to make happen.
Large countries like to boast that their absolute number is bigger, it’s a tale as old as time.
If you really want to make comparisons (and I’d argue it’s really not that important) you should probably look at medals per capita, or medals per athlete sent. Obviously that gets a bit distorted with countries with small population, but I think it’s a more valuable number.
Being able to train that many gold medal athletes is still a worthy boast though. I’d rather countries compete on metrics like this rather than threaten each other with war
This is de facto extremely distorted, if not nullified, by the fact the collective sports (football, volley, etc) get 1 medal to each country, and solitary sports have multiple variants of the same competition that gives multiple medals to the same small teams or the same individuals (gymnastics, swimming, racing, etc). A nation that made 22 gold medalist athletes in football gets behind one that has made 2 gold medalists in swimming, gymnastics or racing. One of many such sport distortions in the Olympics.
Large countries like to boast that their absolute number is bigger, it’s a tale as old as time.
If you really want to make comparisons (and I’d argue it’s really not that important) you should probably look at medals per capita, or medals per athlete sent. Obviously that gets a bit distorted with countries with small population, but I think it’s a more valuable number.
By the medals per capita metric the USA is 47th, and China is 75th.
https://www.medalspercapita.com/
I can’t find a good list for medals per athlete sent.
Being able to train that many gold medal athletes is still a worthy boast though. I’d rather countries compete on metrics like this rather than threaten each other with war
This is de facto extremely distorted, if not nullified, by the fact the collective sports (football, volley, etc) get 1 medal to each country, and solitary sports have multiple variants of the same competition that gives multiple medals to the same small teams or the same individuals (gymnastics, swimming, racing, etc). A nation that made 22 gold medalist athletes in football gets behind one that has made 2 gold medalists in swimming, gymnastics or racing. One of many such sport distortions in the Olympics.