Countries With The Best and Worst Performance at the Olympics

With Tokyo 2020 well and truly underway we thought it would be a good time to look into the teams that traditionally and those that, despite sending a big squad, don’t.

We’ve had the opening ceremony which was understandably stripped back and behind closed doors.

Athletes from canoe slalom, fencing, weightlifting, sailing, boxing, rowing and trampolining were the only ones permitted for the walk on, although the US team still looked huge.

Team GB sent 22, including flag bearers Hannah Mills and Mohamed Sbihi, and now we’re ready to go.

But which teams are the most successful at the games historically?

Most Appearances At The Summer Olympics

Five countries – Great Britain, France, Australia, Switzerland and Greece – have all appeared at more summer games than any other nation. Ahead of but not including Tokyo 2020, these countries have taken part in 28 Summer Olympics since 1896.

Austria, Denmark, Italy Sweden and the USA have all appeared in at 27 summer games, while Kosovo and South Sudan all took part for the first time in Rio 2016.

Most Successful Teams At The Olympics

Looking at gold medals first, there is one team above all others that no one else can get close to – the USA.

This comes as absolutely no surprise at all. This country always brings the biggest squad, play most events and have financial advantages that many other countries simply can’t compete with.

In total, not including any medals collected in Tokyo, the USA have amassed a gold medal collection some 1,022 deep.

The Soviet Union come in a distant second which is no small feat given the nation ceased to be in 1991, a full year before the Barcelona 92 games.

Impressively, Team GB are third in the table. The table above shows the nations who have scooped the most gold medals at the summer games.

Best Track Record in Summer Olympic Sports

Breaking things down sport by sport we can see which countries excel at what sport. Sometimes this might be a cultural thing but in other cases the sport may only have been added to the list of Olympic sports recently.

From Archery to Wrestling, these are the top performing nations in each Summer Olympic sport.

There are plenty of countries that have never won a medal and there are many that have only ever won a very small amount of medals or as few as one such as Iraq and Sudan.

African nations Tanzania, Mozambique and Niger as well as Afghanistan have wall won two medals each.

In total, there are more than sixty countries that have never won an Olympic medal despite taking part. On top of this there are many more that collected medals, none of which were gold.

There will be economic and social reason why many countries do poorly, just as it isn’t a surprise to see countries like the UK, USA and France doing well.

Some of the countries that have never won a medal have sizeable populations. Bangladesh, wile poor, the most highly populated country that has never won a medal despite taking part in nine Olympics. The Cricket mad nation is followed by other highly populated nations that have never medalled such as Congo Bhutan, Albania, Belize, Honduras and Somalia.

There are many reasons why some teams to better than others. With most nations on earth taking part but at the end of the day it seems that countries with most money, better investment and higher quality facilities will, unsurprisingly, perform better.