Guest Author - Violette DeSantis

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games closed Sunday, August 24th after two weeks. A total of 958 medals where acquired by Olympians in 87 countries. Interestingly enough every country went home with at least one medal.

The distribution of medals was 302 Gold, 303 Silver and 353 Bronze. Everyday the world watched and usually was watching as the top three countries in medal contention stayed the same. The United States, China and the Russian Federation were in the top three; however China was outdone by ten medals when the USA took the total for medals won with 110 to China’s 100. Russia trailed with 72 medals total.

The top ten by medal totals were as follows:

United States 110
China 100
Russian Fed. 72
Great Britain 47
Australia 46
Germany 41
France 40
Korea 31
Italy 28
Ukraine 27

However by Rank, which is based on number of Gold Medals, then Silvers followed by bronze the breakdown look like this:

China – Gold 51, Silver 21 and Bronze 28
USA – Gold 36, Silver 38 and Bronze 36
Russia – Gold 23, Silver 21 and Bronze 28
Great Britian – Gold 19, Silver 13 and Bronze 15
Germany – Gold 16, Silver 10 and Bronze 15
Australia – Gold 14, Silver 15 and Bronze 17
Korea – Gold 13, Silver 10 and Bronze 8
Japan – Gold 9, Silver 6 and Bronze 10
Italy – Gold 8, Silver 10 and Bronze 10
France – Gold 7, Silver 16 and Bronze 17

Men won a total of 532 medals compared to the women’s total 396. Combined or mixed teams where men and women competed together represented a total of 30 medals, ten each between Gold, Silver and Bronze.

It is interesting to note that while men did win the most totals overall in the 2008 Olympic Games, the United States had an even breakdown of medals between men and women at 53 each, although the numbers by medal type were different.

Nineteen of the 87 countries took home only one medal. Some countries even won their first gold ever in a particular sport. France won its first in Handball and China won its first in boxing.

The games closed with some sadness. It will be the last Olympics for Softball and Baseball. Hopefully the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will discuss adding them back to the Olympic Games in the future. If Baseball can survive the bad news of drug use and make a comeback and when there is more interest in Softball in other countries to make for better competition.

In two more years we will have the excitement of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games in Canada. I can’t wait!