Which Country Has Won the Most Olympic Medals?

By
Satendra Kumar
-
0
244
Olympic Medals

The Olympic Games is one of the oldest global sporting events still running, with the first edition held as far back as 1896 in Athens.

In 2024, France will welcome the Olympics, with Paris taking centre stage and 16 other cities around the country (as well as Tahiti) also welcoming individual athletic disciplines.
Each participant will be hoping to win a medal – some in expectation, many more in hope. They will be representing their country and hoping to play their part in their nation’s climb up the overall medals table.

But which country has won more Olympic medals than any other?

Going for Gold

A number of sportsbooks offer Olympics betting odds, with lines for most medals and most gold medals available.

In the Olympic Games 2024 betting, the United States leads the way as the heavy -700 favorite to win most medals – historically, that has been a solid wager.

The USA has won more Olympic medals than any other individual country – 2,638, to be exact, from their participation in 28 editions of the Summer Games.

Readers of a certain vintage may remember the Soviet Union, a huge landmass that incorporated Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and many other countries before its dissolution. Competing at the Summer Olympics as a unified force between 1952 and 1988, athletes from the Soviet Union won 1,010 medals at the Games to sit in second place in the all-time table.

Taking the bronze medal in the list of Olympic medals winners is Great Britain, who have won 916 medals in total prior to the 2024 edition. Some 65 of those came at the London Games of 2012.


For political reasons, Germany has at points in its history been divided into West and East regions. But if they had remained a combined force throughout the annals of the Olympic Games, they would have won a tally of 1,064 medals.

Which Country Has Won the Most Olympic Gold Medals?

Of course, the medal that all sportsmen and women at the Olympics are aiming for is gold.
When looking at the all-time Olympic gold medal table, you might not be surprised to learn that it’s the United States that have won more than any other nation – in fact, they’ve clinched more than double the total of any other!

America’s haul of 1,061 golds at the Summer Olympics dwarfs the totals of the next best nations, which include the Soviet Union (395), Great Britain (284) and China (263).

But there’s an alternative angle to consider: Olympic gold medals per capita. The United States is a mammoth country, with a huge population, extensive resources, and thus exceptional training programs for its athletes.

So which countries, perhaps not blessed with such riches, continue to outperform expectations based on a per capita calculation?


The gold medal, in that sense, goes to the Bahamas, whose eight gold medals – and 16 of any colour – comes from a population of approximately 400,000 inhabitants. A similar calculation for the 2020 Olympics saw Bermuda, with one gold medal from a population of around 64,000 people, take the top spot.

So will the USA dominate again in 2024, and which nation will outperform expectations based upon their population size?

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR