Greece at the 1896 Summer Olympics

Greece at the
1896 Summer Olympics
IOC codeGRE
NOCHellenic Olympic Committee
Websitewww.hoc.gr (in Greek and English)
in Athens,  Greece
April 6, 1896 – April 15, 1896
Competitors169 in 9 sports and 39 events
Medals
Ranked 2nd
Gold
10
Silver
18
Bronze
19
Total
47
Summer Olympics appearances (overview)
Other related appearances
1906 Intercalated Games

Greece was the host nation of the 1896 Summer Olympics held in Athens. The number of Greek contestants is commonly cited as 169, but as many as 176 Greeks[1] contested events in all nine sports. The Greeks were by far the most successful nation in terms of total medals with 47, 27 more than the United States of America. Nevertheless, their number of first-place finishes (10) was one fewer than the Americans' 11. The Greeks had 172 entries in 39 events. Only 4 events had no Greek entrants—the 400 metres and the high jump in athletics and the vault and the team horizontal bar in gymnastics.

  1. ^ The names of 103 competitors are known. Up to 7 unknown swimmers, 22 unknown shooters, and 44 unknown gymnasts competed for a total of 176. Most historians reduce the number of swimmers to 6 unknowns, saying that two of the entries were by the same swimmer, as well as noting that the 104 known competitors include three gymnasts who probably were among the 44 unnamed competitors in the team event. These two changes reduce the total competitors to 172. A comparison of Mallon's tables of multiple-event athletes indicates that he believes 3 of the unknown gymnasts also competed in other sports, reducing the number further to 169, which is the number he uses for Greece, Smyrna and Cyprus.