United States wins 1,000th Summer Olympic gold medal
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With a monster day on Friday, and a women’s rowing gold, men’s long jump gold and women’s swimming gold Saturday at the Rio Olympics, the United States has now won 1,000 gold medals at the Summer Games.
The women’s swimming relay team of Lilly King, Simone Manuel, Dana Vollmer and Kathleen Baker won the 1,000th gold with its victory in the 4×100-meter medley relay.
Olympic historians are actually split on the exact medal count for the Americans. Bill Mallon had the count at 996 coming into Saturday. Infostrada had it at 997. There hasn’t been a consensus conclusion on which is correct. But the U.S. Olympic Committee had the official number at 977 before the 2016 Games began, and the U.S. has won 23 golds so far in Rio including the three on Saturday.
The U.S. won its first medal of the day in women’s eights rowing. That brought the all-time count to 998. Then American long-jumper Jeff Henderson brought it to 999. The women’s swimming relay team made it 1,000.
Michael Phelps and the men’s 4×100 medley relay team won No. 1,001 shortly after the women won No. 1,000.
The achievement highlights the remarkable dominance of American athletes at the Summer Games. Here’s a look at the all-time Summer Olympics gold medal top 10 heading into Saturday:
United States — 997
Soviet Union — 395
Great Britain — 243
China — 214
France — 207
Italy — 202
Germany — 180
Hungary — 172
East Germany — 153
Sweden — 144
The U.S. has more than 2,400 Summer Olympic medals overall, nearly 1,100 combined Summer and Winter Olympic gold medals, and more than 2,700 total Olympic medals.
