U.S. leads Olympic medal count in Paris but there's more to the story

By Brian Mann

Published August 9, 2024 at 4:00 AM CDT

Gold medals are the big prize in Paris. China and the U.S. are running neck and neck when it comes to gold. But on a per capita basis tiny Australia is punching above its weight.

NPR is in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. For more of our coverage from the Games head to our latest updates.

PARIS — The medal count at the Paris Summer Games will change fast in the days ahead, but a couple of big trends have emerged that are fun to examine.

First, yes, the U.S. is leading overall (at the moment) in both Olympic gold medals and total medals. American athletes, often cheered on by family who've made the trip to Paris, have mostly hit their marks and often outperformed expectations, garnering more than a hundred medals.

Behind that basic stat, things get more complicated and in some ways more interesting.

China keeps it close

Let's start with China. The medal count this year shows China has firmly established itself as the big Olympic rival of the U.S., especially when it comes to gold medals.

Anchored by three sports, diving, shooting and table tennis, Chinese athletes have kept the gold medal race close. The U.S. has a lock on the total medal count, but it'll go down to the wire whether the U.S. or China comes away from Paris with the most gold.

If China wins the gold medal race, it'll be a first time it accomplishes that feat since the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

Tiny Australia is an Olympic superpower

The next notable medal performance - in some ways the most remarkable - is Australia. The country has a relatively tiny population - about the same as Texas.

But anchored by a stunningly talented swim team (and a strong group of canoe racers) Australian athletes have racked up a crazy number of total medals (43 currently), including 18 gold. It's Australia's best medal performance ever.

That represents an unbelievable per capita medal score. Consider this: The U.S. is winning roughly one Olympic medal for every 3.5 million citizens. Australia is winning one medal for every 570,000 citizens.

The Old World is still really good at this Game

Turning to Europe, it can be easy to think of Old World countries like France, Germany, and Italy as stodgy relics of the Chariots of Fire era of the Olympics. But taken as a whole, Europe still dominates the Summer Games that Greece invented.

The European Union (not including Britain, of course) has won more than 160 total medals in Paris. That's more than China and the U.S. combined. Host country France has done especially well, racking up more than 50 medals.

What happened to Russia?

Finally we have to talk about the devastating collapse of Russia's involvement in these Summer Games. Russia has typically finished in the top-5 among nations in overall medal count.

But this year, plagued by doping scandals and treated by the International Olympic Committee as a pariah following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Moscow sent only a handful of athletes.

So far, only two Russians have won medals at these Games, a shared silver in women's doubles tennis. Ukraine has scored eight medals, including three gold.

Corrected: August 9, 2024 at 2:56 PM CDT

In an earlier version of this story, we reported that athletes from Russia had not won any medals in Paris. In fact they have won two. The International Olympic Committee does not include Russian medals in their official tabulation.