The Paris Summer Olympic Games have commenced and the competition is in full swing. With 14 medal events on day one, the race for bronze, silver, and gold recognition has officially begun.
Team USA finished the first day with five medals—one gold, two silver, and two bronze—with triumphs occuring in swimming, diving, and road cycling. Team USA’s first gold medal of this year’s games came in the men’s 4×100-m freestyle relay with a time of 3:09.28. The women’s 4×100-m freestyle relay team also garnered silver, and Katie Ledecky won bronze in the 400-m freestyle.
Australia was the lead for medals after a spectacular first day in road cycling and swimming, with South Korea close behind.
But with so many events left to come, the race is very much wide open.
At the Summer Olympics, there are 329 medal events—157 of which are for men, 152 for women, and 20 mixed-gender events. Overall, there are close to 1,000 medals to be snagged by any of the 206 countries in the International Olympic Committee (IOC)— each of which will have at least one athlete in Paris this summer.
Over the 19 days of competition, around 10,500 athletes will compete for medals in 32 sports, and for the first time they will do so with gender parity—with the same number of male and female athletes.
Historically, Team USA has dominated the Summer Olympics, entering Paris with 1,070 gold medals and 2,667 medals overall. Next, the Soviet Union garnered 1,009 medals. Great Britain and the People’s Republic of China have 916 and 636 respectively. There are more than 60 countries at these Olympics that have never earned an Olympic medal. And yet, all that could change over the next month.
Here are how many medals each country has won at the 2024 Paris Olympics:
