Twenty Year Medal Table for Ski Jumping

Winter Olympic Games 1998 – 2014

Switzerland is not the best country in the world at ski jumping. Its position at the top of the table is due to the four golds won by its sole ski jumping medallist, Simon Ammann. If Kamil Stoch, who swept the Four Hills event earlier this year, wins two or more titles in Pyeongchang, he could similarly catapult Poland to the top, though Poland has more of a pedigree than Switzerland, with Wojciech Fortuna having taken gold back in 1972, and Alan Malys having collected three silvers and one bronze medal behind Ammann.

One of the more surprising participants to qualify for the Games is Fatih Arda Ipcioglu of Turkey, who trains at a facility built for the 2011 Winter Universiade. Along with 17-year-old Muhammed Ali Bedir, he could make Turkey a country to watch for the future.

	G	S	B
Switzerland	4	0	0	4
Austria	3	3	4	10
Germany	3	3	0	6
Poland	2	3	1	6
Japan	2	2	2	6
Finland	1	4	1	6
Norway	1	0	5	6
Slovenia	0	1	2	3
France	0	0	1	1

Next: How Austria and Germany overtook Norway and Finland as ski jumping powers

Twenty Year Medal Table for Wrestling

Summer Olympic Games 1996 – 2012

Japan is historically one of the strongest nations in wresting, where the sport has grown out of its sumo tradition. But most of its recent medals have been on the women’s side, where it has won an extraordinary seven out of the twelve gold medals ever awarded. At London 2012, Tatsuhiro Yonemitsu was its first male champion since way back in 1988.

Turkey’s success dates back to the earlier London Olympics, in 1948, from which it took home six gold medals. Iran won its first title back in 1956 in Melbourne. Iran’s neighbour Azerbaijan is a rising power – though they have very different histories, there are many cultural commonalities between them. Azerbaijani government investment also helps.

Soviet wrestling medallists once came disproportionately from Georgia and, to a lesser extent, Azerbaijan. Since the Cold War came to an end, a startling 11 of Russia’s 25 gold medals have been due to Dagestan, a state which looks jealously across the border at its fellow Caucasians. Russia hopes that wrestling will check its independence ambitions.

	G	S	B
Russia	25	10	13	48
United States	9	9	10	28
Japan	8	4	8	20
Cuba	5	5	4	14
Iran	5	4	5	14
South Korea	4	6	2	12
Azerbaijan	4	5	5	14
Uzbekistan	4	3	0	7
Turkey	4	1	6	11
Ukraine	3	5	6	14
Poland	3	1	3	7
Georgia	2	4	9	15
Bulgaria	2	3	4	9
Canada	2	3	2	7
China	2	3	2	7
Kazakhstan	1	4	9	14
Hungary	1	3	2	6
Armenia	1	2	3	6
France	1	1	4	6
Sweden	1	1	3	5
Egypt	1	1	0	2
North Korea	1	0	3	4
Italy	1	0	0	1
Belarus	0	3	5	8
Germany	0	2	2	4
Finland	0	2	1	3
India	0	1	2	3
Kyrgyzstan	0	1	1	2
Estonia	0	1	0	1
Puerto Rico	0	1	0	1
Tajikistan	0	1	0	1
Colombia	0	0	2	2
Greece	0	0	2	2
Lithuania	0	0	2	2
Macedonia	0	0	1	1
Moldova	0	0	1	1
Mongolia	0	0	1	1
Slovakia	0	0	1	1
Spain	0	0	1	1

 

Twenty Year Medal Table for Table Tennis

Summer Olympic Games 1996 – 2012

During the last twenty years, China has won 95% of gold medals and 59% of medals of any colour. Getting into the Chinese team is now so competitive that many have left to seek their fortunes elsewhere, and China’s dominance is made even more emphatic by the fact that all of the medallists for Singapore, Hong Kong and Chinese Taipei were born on the Chinese mainland. Only South Korea has been able to put up a challenge.

The Chinese diaspora will reach an extraordinary new peak in Rio, especially in the case of female players. Of the 86 qualifiers for the women’s events, 28 were born in China, a third of the total, but only three will turn out for the country of their birth. The others will represent 17 different teams, as diverse as Turkey, Luxembourg, Congo and Brazil.

Far from being inevitable, the growth of the sport in China started from a chance event, a Communist sympathiser becoming head of the International Table Tennis Federation.

	G	S	B
China	19	11	6	36
South Korea	1	2	6	9
Germany	0	1	3	4
Singapore	0	1	2	3
Chinese Taipei	0	1	1	2
Hong Kong	0	1	0	1
Japan	0	1	0	1
North Korea	0	1	0	1
Sweden	0	1	0	1
Denmark	0	0	1	1
France	0	0	1	1

Next: Which countries have given the biggest kick to their taekwondo medal chances?