Olympic medal tally of Latin America

The Summer Olympics are close to happening. After being postponed by the sanitary measures that were taken worldwide last year, the expectation has reached a critical point. Despite the existing uncertainty regarding whether they will be cancelled, postponed again or if they will continue, the truth is that the Olympic Games. They are one of the few events that manage to bring countries so close and thus unite the entire population. However, they are also the cause of great rivalry and healthy competition between the different committees that make up the great International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The Olympics find their origin in ancient Greece, but they are actually a modern phenomenon that has forged the international community regarding the perception of sports. The passing of the years and the world medal table have created a kind of categories or prosopopoeic qualities that end up falling on the different countries, almost as if there was a genetic predisposition towards some sport in the nationality. It will not be strange to the reader to have ever heard that Russians are good for artistic competition, while Asian countries like Japan dominate contact competitions, or that certain Latin American countries " were born" for boxing.

The list continues with each of the 28 (soon 33) sports of the summer and 7 winter games, in such a way that it might seem that all countries could find a lucky Olympic niche in which to place themselves and secure some medal. However, the truth is that there are countries that, despite having their own committee for participation in the Olympic Games for decades, have barely managed to secure 1 or 2 medals. What is even more incredible is the fact that certain countries in the world have not won a single Olympic medal throughout their entire history. Such is the case of 5 countries in Latin America: Belize, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.

On the other side of the coin, in Latin America the two countries with the most Olympic medals have a combined total of 355 medals, which far dwarfs the Latin American regional average of 28, but remains minuscule compared to countries like France, Germany, the United Kingdom or the United States, who have 840, 855, 883, 1,204 and 2,828 Olympic medals respectively. Such a disparity could be alarming at first reading, but it would be pernicious to jump to conclusions without a prior analysis of the different factors that influence the performance of each country. In the meantime, you can find the Olympic medal table for each Latin American country below.

Olympic medals by country in Latin America