How the medal table is built
An Olympic medal table ranks countries by the medals their athletes have won. The diagram stacks gold, silver, and bronze totals for the leading nations across Olympic history. The conventional ranking used by the International Olympic Committee orders countries first by number of gold medals, then by silver, then by bronze, so a nation with more golds outranks one with a larger total of lesser medals. Some media outlets instead rank by total medal count, which can produce a different order.
Reading the all-time leaders
Across the modern Games, the United States holds the largest all-time medal haul by a wide margin, followed by historic totals from the Soviet Union, Germany, Great Britain, France, and others, with China rising rapidly in recent decades. A stacked bar makes the composition visible: two countries can sit close on total medals while differing sharply in how many of those are gold. The chart is best read as cumulative across many Games rather than a single year's results.