Olympic medal table

The Olympic medal table is a method of sorting the medal placements of countries in the modern-day Olympics and Paralympics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) does not officially recognize a ranking of participating countries at the Olympic Games.[1] Nevertheless, the IOC does publish medal tallies for information purposes, showing the total number of Olympic medals earned by athletes representing each country's respective National Olympic Committee.[2] The convention used by the IOC is to sort by the number of gold medals the athletes from a country have earned. In the event of a tie in the number of gold medals, the number of silver medals is taken into consideration, and then the number of bronze medals. If two countries have an equal number of gold, silver, and bronze medals, they are ordered in the table alphabetically by their IOC country code.

  1. ^ Johnson, Ian (13 August 2008). "Who's on First in Medals Race". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 12 January 2009.
  2. ^ Araton, Harvey (18 August 2008). "A Medal Count That Adds Up To Little". The New York Times. Retrieved 12 January 2009.