Olympic Medal Trivia

BEIJING, July 23 (UPI) -- The International Olympic Committee would prefer that no one pay attention to just how many medals are won by athletes from a particular country.

There is even a brief mention of that preference within the bylaws that govern the Olympics.

"The IOC ... shall not draw up any global ranking per country," says the Olympic Charter. To which those who watch and chronicle the Games say, "fat chance."

Keeping records when it comes to Olympic medals has been going on since the first of the modern Games was held in 1896 and that record keeping shows the following:

-- The United States has won 897 gold medals during the history of the Olympics. Before its breakup, the Soviet Union collected 440. No other nation has more than 200. In the three Olympics that Russia has sent athletes to the Games as a separate country, that nation has won 85 gold medals. During the same time frame, the United States has won 118.

-- Beginning with the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, there has been a steady increase in the number of countries that have won at least one medal. The number grew from 47 nations in 1984 to 52 in 1988, 64 in 1992, 79 in 1996 and 80 in 2000. For the first time in two decades, however, the number failed to rise in the Athens Games of 2004. Only 74 countries claimed at least one medal in those Olympics.

-- In 1896, American William Holt won the first Olympic pole vault competition, after which an athlete from the United States captured the event in every Games through 1968. That streak of 16 straight victories in the pole vault is an Olympic record for most consecutive gold medals won in the same event by the same country. Since 1968, a United States vaulter has won just twice in nine Olympics. But those wins have come in the last two Games -- by Nick Hysong in Sydney and Tim Mack in Athens.

-- The host nation traditionally enjoys a medal upsurge when the Games are held on its soil. Greece won more medals (17) in 2004 than it had in any Games since the inaugural Olympics, which were also in Athens. In the four Olympics following World War II, Japan won a combined nine gold medals. But when the Olympics were in Tokyo in 1960, Japanese athletes collected 16 golds. A rare exception to the trend came in 1976, when not a single gold medal went to a Canadian in Montreal. The only time that country's national anthem was played during the Olympics came at the opening and closing ceremonies.

-- The most populous nation in the world (China) won 63 medals at the 2004 Olympics. The third most populous nation in the world (the United States) won 102. The second most populous nation in the world (India) won one. It was the third consecutive Olympics that India, home to about 17 percent of the planet's humanity, had claimed only a single medal. In the three Olympics prior to that (1984, 1988 and 1992), India didn't win any medals.