It is counterintuitive, but almost 20% of Olympic participants win medals at the Summer Olympic Games.
In Tokyo, for example, 2,402 medals were won by 2,175 athletes in 339 events at the Games. With 11,319 total participants, that’s about 19.2% of all participants – almost one in five – winning medals.
Those numbers will shift slightly in 2024 – there are about 1000 fewer athletes participating, but there will likely be fewer medals awarded with large-team sports like baseball and softball being replaced by more individual sports like skateboarding, sport climbing, and breaking.
While there were only 339 sets of medals, the number of actual medals given (which is not what is tracked on most medals tables) far exceeds that.
For example, in sports like swimming and athletics, all legs of a relay receive a medal, even if it only counts for “one” in the official medals tables.
Incidentally, this is why the “such and such state or such and such university won more medals than almost every country” factoids are silly. If two members of the University of Virginia swim team win a medal on the same relay, they will count that as two, whereas the official national medals table will only count it as one.
Paris is minting 5,000 total medals, though that is far more than will be awarded to top three finishers in events.
Why does this feel so counterintuitive?
If you live in the world of swimming, like us, or track & field, with huge universality counts, that feels weird.
But even in swimming, it’s more than you think. Team USA won “30 medals” based on event tallies, but 38 out of 53 members of the team won at least one medal thanks to relays, totaling 116 actual medals.
In total, even in swimming, which has the most-robust universality program in the Olympic Games, 124 different swimmers won medals across 37 events. That’s about 12% of the 1000 participating swimmers, so you can already see that the ratio is much higher than expected in one of the lowest-ratio sports.
But where things really swing is the team sports. In baseball, for example, with roster of 24 athletes, 50% of players won medals (only six teams participated). The same is true in softball, with 15-player rosters. In women’s water polo, 30% of participating players earn medals. In men’s and women’s basketball, 25% of teams win medals. 25% of teams in the women’s soccer tournament win medals. 25% of the players in both team handball tournaments.
These are big teams with tons of players and the numbers start to add up to offset the sports like swimming and track & field with lower medalist ratios.
While the Olympics have generally expressed a desire to shift toward sports with smaller teams (like 3×3 basketball), the Los Angeles Olympics will welcome more sports with big rosters – like flag football and cricket.
While getting to the Olympic Games is hard enough, winning a medal adds another layer of difficulty.