United States at the Olympics

The United States has hosted the modern Olympic Games eight times, more than any other nation. These occasions span from the 1904 St. Louis Olympics to the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Beyond hosting, the U.S. has significantly impacted the Olympics through athletic achievements, innovations in sports infrastructure and technology, and cultural contributions. Its influence extends to advocating Olympic ideals and leaving lasting legacies in host cities. Overall, the U.S. plays a central role in the history and ongoing development of the Olympic movement. For example, the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics pioneered the use of electronic timing devices. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, for instance, set new standards for opening and closing ceremonies. Even when not hosting, the U.S. has played a crucial role in the administration and promotion of the Olympics through organizations like the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and its participation in the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Hosting the Olympics has left lasting legacies in host cities, such as improved infrastructure, economic benefits, and increased tourism. For example, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics revitalized parts of the city and left behind sporting venues still in use today.

In 2028, the third Los Angeles Olympics will mark the ninth occasion that the Olympics are hosted in the U.S.

The United States made its Olympic debut in 1896 in Athens, the very first edition of the modern games. The nation performed inconsistently in the pre-World War-I period, primarily due to fielding considerably fewer athletes than host countries, with the exception being the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, where the U.S. achieved its largest medal haul in history, a record that still stands today. During the interwar period, the U.S. enjoyed its greatest success, topping both gold and total medal counts at four straight Summer Games, before falling short in the 1936 Berlin games. The next summer Olympics were held in 1948 following World War II. In 1952, the Soviet Union made its Olympic debut, initiating a state-sponsored approach to international sport focused on projecting socio-political superiority. The rapid rise of the Soviet Union to challenge the United States as a leading Olympic power raised questions and suspicion about the means used to achieve this, including the pretense of professional athletes having amateur status and allegations of state-sponsored doping. After 20 years of competition on the Olympic stage, the USSR convincingly topped the gold medal chart at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. After that, the U.S. would not top the medal table in non-boycotted games until the 1996 Summer Olympics, five years after the USSR collapsed.^[15][16] A bright spot for the United States was the 1984 games in Los Angeles, where the U.S. set a record for most gold medals won in a single Olympics (83), buoyed by the Soviet-led boycott. Coincident with a drive by the International Olympic Committee toward gender parity beginning in the 1990s, the U.S.'s fortunes improved, and the nation topped the medal table in the Summer Olympics six times since 1992 and placed second on two occasions.

In contrast to its summer Olympics status, the United States was not a power in the Winter Games until the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Hosting the games in 2002 boosted the U.S. winter sports program; since then, the country’s athletes have performed consistently well, never placing below fourth in the medal count. The nation won the most medals (37) at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver but dropped to 23 medals at the 2018 games in Pyeongchang.

Best results

Summer Olympics Gold medals – 83 (1984 Summer Olympics), Olympic record Total medals – 231 (1904 Summer Olympics), Olympic record

Winter Olympics Gold medals – 10 (2002 Winter Olympics) Total medals – 37 (2010 Winter Olympics)

More information Sport, Gold ...

Medals by summer sport   Leading in that sport Sport Gold Silver Bronze Total  Athletics 358 280 224 862  Swimming 265 191 150 606  Shooting 58 34 29 121  Wrestling 57 46 42 145  Boxing 50 27 41 118  Diving 49 47 46 142  Artistic gymnastics 40 44 42 126  Rowing 34 32 25 91  Basketball 27 2 3 32  Tennis 21 7 13 41  Cycling 20 24 22 66  Sailing 19 23 20 62  Weightlifting 17 17 12 46  Archery 14 11 10 35  Equestrian 11 24 20 55  Beach volleyball 7 2 2 11  Fencing 6 12 19 37  Canoeing 6 6 7 19  Golf 6 3 5 14  Artistic swimming 5 3 2 10  Football 5 2 2 9  Water polo 4 6 6 16  Volleyball 4 4 5 13  Taekwondo 3 2 6 11  Softball 3 2 0 5  Judo 2 4 8 14  Rugby 2 0 1 3  Surfing 2 0 0 2  Triathlon 1 2 2 5  Baseball 1 1 2 4  Roque 1 1 1 3  Tug of war 1 1 0 2  3x3 basketball 1 0 1 2  Jeu de paume 1 0 0 1  Modern pentathlon 0 6 3 9  Skateboarding 0 2 3 5  Sport climbing 0 2 1 3  Polo 0 1 1 2  Lacrosse 0 1 0 1  Marathon swimming 0 1 0 1  Field hockey 0 0 2 2  Breaking 0 0 1 1  Karate 0 0 1 1 Totals (43 entries) 1,101 873 780 2,754 Updated on November 16, 2024 *This table does not include two medals – one silver awarded in the ice hockey and one bronze awarded in the figure skating events at the 1920 Summer Olympics. The United States has never won an Olympic medal in the following current summer sports or disciplines: badminton, handball, rhythmic gymnastics, table tennis and trampoline gymnastics.

Medals by winter sport   Leading in that sport Sport Gold Silver Bronze Total  Speed skating 30 22 19 71  Alpine skiing 17 21 10 48  Figure skating 17 16 21 54  Snowboarding 17 8 10 35  Freestyle skiing 11 13 9 33  Bobsleigh 8 11 9 28  Ice hockey 4 12 2 18  Short track speed skating 4 7 9 20  Skeleton 3 4 1 8  Nordic combined 1 3 0 4  Cross-country skiing 1 2 1 4  Curling 1 0 1 2  Luge 0 3 3 6  Ski jumping 0 0 1 1 Totals (14 entries) 114 122 96 332 Updated on December 31, 2021 *This table includes two medals – one silver awarded in the ice hockey and one bronze awarded in the figure skating events at the 1920 Summer Olympics. The United States has never won an Olympic medal in the following current winter sport: biathlon.

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Best results in non-medaling sports

More information Summer, Winter ...

Summer
Sport	Rank	Athlete	Event & Year
Badminton	8th	Howard Bach & Bob Malaythong	Men's doubles in 2008
Handball	5th	United States women's team	Women's tournament in 1984
Rhythmic gymnastics	9th	Mandy James Alaine Mata-Baquerot Kate Nelson Brandi Siegel Challen Sievers Becky Turner	Women's group in 1996
Table tennis	6th	Gao Jun Crystal Huang Wang Chen	Women's team in 2008
Trampoline gymnastics	6th	Savannah Vinsant	Women's individual in 2012
		Nicole Ahsinger	Women's individual in 2020
Winter
Sport	Rank	Athlete	Event & Year
Biathlon	6th	Lowell Bailey Tim Burke Sean Doherty Leif Nordgren	Men's relay in 2018

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The exclusion of professionals caused several controversies throughout the history of the modern Olympics. The 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon champion Jim Thorpe was stripped of his medals, when it was discovered that he had played semi-professional baseball before the Olympics. His medals were posthumously restored by the IOC in 1983 on compassionate grounds.^[23]

The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries eroded the ideology of the pure amateur. It put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but all of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis.^[24][25][26] The situation greatly disadvantaged American athletes and was a major factor in the decline of American medal hauls in the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, the Olympics shifted away from amateurism, as envisioned by Pierre de Coubertin. They began allowing participation of professional athletes, but only in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its influence within the International Olympic Committee.^[27][28][29]

When a U.S. athlete wins an Olympic medal, as of 2016, the USOPC paid the winner $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze.^[30] The USOPC increased the payouts by 25% to $37,000 for gold, $22,500 for silver, and $15,000 for bronze beginning in 2017.^[31] These numbers are significantly lower than in other countries, where Olympic gold medalists receive up to $1 million from their governments for a gold medal.^[32][33] Since 2018, payouts to Paralympic athletes have been the same as to the Olympians. The International Paralympic Committee noted that "'Operation Gold Awards' for [American] Paralympic athletes [would] be increased by as much as 400 percent."^[34]

United States has had eight Olympic medals stripped for doping violations. In all cases, the US government or the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) had nothing to do with it, and sanctioned athletes acted on their own. In the case of swimmer Rick DeMont, the USOC has recognized his gold medal performance in the 1972 Summer Olympics in 2001,^[37] but only the IOC has the power to restore his medal, and it has as of 2024 refused to do so.^[37] DeMont originally won the gold medal in 4:00.26. Following the race, the IOC stripped him of his gold medal^[38] after his post-race urinalysis tested positive for traces of the banned substance ephedrine contained in his prescription asthma medication, Marax. The positive test following the 400-meter freestyle final also deprived him of a chance at multiple medals, as he was not permitted to swim in any other events at the 1972 Olympics, including the 1,500-meter freestyle for which he was the then-current world record-holder. Before the Olympics, DeMont had properly declared his asthma medications on his medical disclosure forms, but the USOC had not cleared them with the IOC's medical committee.^[39][37]

In 2003, Wade Exum, the United States Olympic Committee's director of drug control administration from 1991 to 2000, gave copies of documents to Sports Illustrated that revealed that some 100 American athletes failed drug tests from 1988 to 2000, arguing that they should have been prevented from competing in the Olympics but were nevertheless cleared to compete; among those athletes were Carl Lewis, Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard.^{[40][41][42][43]} Before showing the documents to Sports Illustrated, Exum tried to use them in a lawsuit against USOC, accusing the organization of racial discrimination and wrongful termination against him and cover-up over the failed tests. His case was summarily dismissed by the Denver federal Court for lack of evidence. The USOC claimed his case "baseless" as he himself was the one in charge of screening the anti-doping test program of the organization and clarifying that the athletes were cleared according to the rules.^[44][45]

Carl Lewis broke his silence on allegations that he was the beneficiary of a drugs cover-up, admitting he had failed tests for banned substances, but claiming he was just one of "hundreds" of American athletes who were allowed to escape bans, concealed by the USOC. Lewis has acknowledged that he failed three tests during the 1988 US Olympic trials, which under international rules at the time should have prevented him from competing in the 1988 Summer Olympics.^[46] Former athletes and officials came out against the USOC cover-up. "For so many years I lived it. I knew this was going on, but there's absolutely nothing you can do as an athlete. You have to believe governing bodies are doing what they are supposed to do. And it is obvious they did not," said former American sprinter and 1984 Olympic champion, Evelyn Ashford.^[47]

Exum's documents revealed that Carl Lewis had tested positive three times at the 1988 Olympics trials for minimum amounts of pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine, which were banned stimulants. Bronchodilators are also found in cold medication. Due to the rules, his case could have led to disqualification from the Seoul Olympics and suspension from competition for six months. The levels of the combined stimulants registered in the separate tests were 2 ppm, 4 ppm and 6 ppm.^[44] Lewis defended himself, claiming that he had accidentally consumed the banned substances. After the supplements that he had taken were analyzed to prove his claims, the USOC accepted his claim of inadvertent use, since a dietary supplement he ingested was found to contain "Ma Huang", the Chinese name for Ephedra (ephedrine is known to help weight loss).^[44] Fellow Santa Monica Track Club teammates Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard were also found to have the same banned stimulants in their systems, and were cleared to compete for the same reason.^[48][49] The highest level of the stimulants Lewis recorded was 6 ppm, which was regarded as a positive test in 1988 but is now regarded as negative test. The acceptable level has been raised to ten parts per million for ephedrine and twenty-five parts per million for other substances.^[44][50] According to the IOC rules at the time, positive tests with levels lower than 10 ppm were cause of further investigation but not immediate ban. Neal Benowitz, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco who is an expert on ephedrine and other stimulants, agreed that "These [levels] are what you'd see from someone taking cold or allergy medicines and are unlikely to have any effect on performance."^[44] Following Exum's revelations the IAAF acknowledged that at the 1988 Olympic Trials the USOC indeed followed the correct procedures in dealing with eight positive findings for ephedrine and ephedrine-related compounds in low concentration. Additionally, in 1988 the federation reviewed the relevant documents with the athletes' names undisclosed and stated that "the medical committee felt satisfied, however, on the basis of the information received that the cases had been properly concluded by the USOC as 'negative cases' in accordance with the rules and regulations in place at the time and no further action was taken".^[51][52]

• List of United States Olympic medalists
• United States at the Paralympics
• United States at the Summer Olympics
• United States at the Winter Olympics
• United States at the Pan American Games
• Four territories of the United States send independent Olympic teams (American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands)