Australia has a proud history at the Summer Olympics. We have won at least one medal in every Summer games all the way back to 1896.
We have secured top-ten finishes on the medals table every Olympics since 1992. The fact there are more than 50 countries with larger populations makes these results ever more impressive.
The 2024 Olympics were no different.
There are different ways to measure Olympic success, however the International Olympic Committee (IOC) medal tally ranks countries by the number of gold medals won.
By this measure, Paris 2024 was Australia’s most successful Olympics.
Our 18 golds breaks the previous record of 17 set in Athens (2004) and Tokyo (2021).
So how did this happen?
The golden haul was led by our swimmers, particularly the women.
Swimming is Australia’s most successful Olympic sport. We have a strong swimming culture and very demanding national qualifying times.
Importantly, there are a lot of swimming events at the Olympics – in Paris there were 35 golds available in the pool. In comparison, sports such as hockey and handball only had two gold medals on offer.
Australia won 18 swimming medals including seven gold.
Traditionally, when the swimming events finish, Australia starts to slide down the medal tally as other countries with strengths in other sports surge.
This slide did not happen as fast in Paris. Day 12, with four golds and two bronze (none from swimming) was our most successful day in Olympic history.
We also won gold medals in events for the first time. One of those went to Arisa Trew, 14, who became our youngest gold medallist and first gold medallist in women’s park skateboarding.
Other first-time golds included the women’s time trial (Grace Brown), men’s 50-metre freestye (Cameron McEvoy), women’s BMX (Saya Sakakibara),........