It’s official; the United States owned the 2016 Summer Olympics. Americans dominated the medal table in Rio de Janeiro, tallying up 121 medals to essentially lap the rest of the field in the world’s biggest sporting gala.
Final Olympic medal count 2016: Men’s basketball win finalizes USA’s gold medal rout
With 121 podium placements, no other country came within 50 medals of the United States.
Sunday’s men’s basketball blowout was the icing on the cake for Team USA. Carmelo Anthony earned his third gold medal and fourth overall by leading a team stocked with NBA talent to a 96-66 win over Serbia. Before that, the Americans made history in the Games’ final combat events.
Claressa Shields made history by becoming the only boxer in the nation’s history to defend her gold medal by dominating the Netherlands Nouchka Fontijn. Kyle Snyder became the youngest U.S. wrestler to stand atop the podium when he won the 97kg freestyle crown by defeating Azerbaijan’s Khetag Gazyumov. Those efforts led to 46 gold medals at the XXXI Olympiad.
Those American golds included:
- The country’s first-ever medals in the 1500m race (gold for Matthew Centrowitz Jr., bronze for Jenny Simpson)
- Pretty much everything Michael Phelps did (five golds, one silver)
- The Games’ first gold medal, won by the extremely metal-named Virginia Thrasher in shooting
- Pretty much everything Katie Ledecky did (four golds, one silver)
- Kayla Harrison’s continued quest to obliterate any woman bold enough to step in front of her on the judo mat
- Pretty much everything Simone Biles did (four golds, one bronze)
- And a women’s water polo win that ended with each player placing their medal on coach Adam Krikorian’s shoulders to honor the memory of his recently deceased brother
China, a country with only 32 years of gold medal experience, was second in the rankings with 70. Great Britain finished third in the overall count with 67, but the nation was second-best when it came to first-place finishes with 27.
In all, 59 different countries claimed gold in Rio. Notable first-time champions include Fiji, Kosovo, Jordan, the Ivory Coast, Puerto Rico, Tajikistan, Singapore, Bahrain and Vietnam.
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