| 1896 Summer Olympics medals | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Athens, Greece | |||
| Highlights | ||||
| Most gold medals |  United States (11) | |||
| Most total medals | Greece (47) | |||
| Medalling NOCs | 11 | |||
| ||||
The1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad, were a summermulti-sport event held inAthens, the capital ofGreece, from 6 to 15 April 1896, and were the firstOlympic Games of the Modern era.
A total of 241 athletes from 14 nations participated in 43 events in nine sports at these games.[1]
Ten of the fourteen participating nations earned medals, and three medals were won bymixed teams, i.e., teams made up of athletes from multiple nations. The United States won the most gold medals (11) with 14 athletes participating. In contrast, the host nation, Greece, with 169 athletes participating, won the most medals overall (47) as well as the most silver (18) and bronze (19) medals, finishing with one less gold medal than the United States, having 155 athletes more than the U.S.[2]
In the early Olympic Games, several team events were contested by athletes from multiple nations.[3] Retroactively, the IOC created the designation "Mixed team" (with thecountry code ZZX) to refer to this group of athletes.Some athletes won medals individually and as part of a mixed team, so these medals are tabulated under different nations in the official counts.Dionysios Kasdaglis, an athlete of Greek origins living inAlexandria, Egypt, is listed by the IOC as Greek during both his competition in thesingles tennis competition and thedoubles tennis competition along with his teammate, the Greek athleteDemetrios Petrokokkinos.[4]
During these inaugural Olympics, winners were given a silver medal and anolive branch, while runners-up received a copper medal and alaurelbranch.[5] The IOC has retroactively assigned gold, silver and bronze medals to the three best-placed athletes in each event to comply with more recent traditions.[2]
Three ties resulted in athletes sharing medals, increasing the medal count of various nations. These include ties betweenFrancis Lane of the United States andAlajos Szokolyi ofHungary, for the third place in the100 metres, and betweenEvangelos Damaskos andIoannis Theodoropoulos of Greece in thepole vault, as well as bronze medals awarded to both losing semi-finalists,Konstantinos Paspatis of Greece andMomcsilló Tapavicza of Hungary, insingles tennis. In addition, five of the bronze medalists at the Games are unknown – two in swimming and three in gymnastics – and several events had no third-place finisher.[5][6]
This is the full table of the medal count of the1896 Summer Olympics, based on theInternational Olympic Committee (IOC) medal count. Some sources, besides the International Olympic Committee (IOC), that display variations in the medal totals, but as the governing body of the Olympic Games, the IOC is considered the most authoritative source for this article. These rankings are sorted by the number of gold medals a country earns. The number of silver medals is considered next, and then the number of bronze medals. If, after the above, countries are still tied, equal ranking is given, and they are listed alphabetically. The IOC provides this information; however, the IOC does not recognise or endorse any ranking system.[2]
* Host nation (Greece)
| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 11 | 7 | 2 | 20 |
| 2 | Greece* | 10 | 18 | 19 | 47 |
| 3 |  Germany | 6 | 5 | 2 | 13 |
| 4 |  France | 5 | 4 | 2 | 11 |
| 5 |  Great Britain | 2 | 3 | 2 | 7 |
| 6 |  Hungary | 2 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| 7 |  Austria | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| 8 |  Australia | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| 9 |  Denmark | 1 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| 10 |  Switzerland | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| 11 |  Mixed team | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Totals (11 entries) | 43 | 43 | 36 | 122 | |
