As the world’s best athletes compete for personal glory and national pride at the 2024 Paris Olympics, domestic audiences will also be curious to see which country will have the honor of winning the most medals.
As of Monday, just as the Paris Games got underway, the United States, Japan, China and host nation France were leading the medal count.
This year’s tournament saw a fierce battle between teams France and the United States for the most overall medals. France is the Olympic host country and will be going up against the United States, which will host the games in 2028. The U.S. took the lead on Monday after strong performances in skateboarding, swimming and men’s gymnastics.
Both countries have a slight advantage in terms of the number of national team players.
The United States has the largest delegation with 594 athletes, followed closely by France with 571 athletes.
Japan was tied with China for third place on the medal list by Monday night, buoyed by last-minute comeback victories by the men’s gymnastics team and skateboarder Hiroto Horigome, but China did manage to claim the tournament’s first gold medal in the 10-meter air rifle mixed team event on Saturday morning.
France’s Olympians have been a multi-sport powerhouse, having already won medals in at least eight different sports, while the United States is off to a strong start in swimming, winning 11 medals in that event.
The U.S. will be hoping to repeat the dominance it had at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, when it brought home 113 medals, significantly more than any other country, with China second only to the U.S. team with 89 medals.
Russia, a dominating presence in past Olympics, will not be able to take part in this year’s games as it has been banned by the International Olympic Committee along with Belarus as part of sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine.
Athletes from these countries can only participate as “individual neutral athletes” or AINs, and their medals will not be counted towards the national medals. Anyone who actively supported the war in either Belarus or Russia was ineligible to participate.
