The Paris Olympics has concluded and, as expected, China and US have the biggest haul of gold medals. Unlike the Tokyo Games, the two countries are joint top in the gold medals, with 40 each. Similar to the Tokyo Games, there are Chinese who don't accept the results and move on. They claimed that China won the most gold medals, claiming that those won by Hong Kong and Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) should count towards China as well. Hong Kong and Taiwan field separate teams and have their own Olympic associations. If zealous Chinese nationalists wants to add Hong Kong's medals to China's total, they should demand the Chinese Olympic Committee to absorb the Hong Kong Olympic Committee (a move I support to prevent confusion by foreigners.)
(This paragraph is copied from a similar article posted after Tokyo 2020.) With that logic, the EU can also claim that it should be on top of the gold medal table (by adding all the gold medals won by its member states.) The US can claim Puerto Rico's medals as its own. Likewise for the British by adding the ones won by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, Kenya and the rest of the Commonwealth to its medal haul. If China, the US, Britain and the EU can add medals this way, the EU would take over the top spot. The medal table (ranked by gold medals won) would look like this:
| Rank | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | 1 | EU | 97 | 95 | 117 | 309 | 2 | Great Britain | 71 | 76 | 86 | 233 | 3 | China | 44 | 27 | 31 | 102 | 4 | United States | 40 | 44 | 44 | 128 |
Again, China finished a distant third to the EU, thanks to double-digit gold medals won by each of Germany, Netherlands, Italy and, of course, France. Great Britain won fewer gold medals, but still lead China by more than half the latter' total.
Similar to what I did for a similar excercise after Tokyo 2020, we add the medals won by countries previous occupied by major countries to find which country won the most medals (gold and overall). In the last exercise South America was hardly represented, if at all, as I forgot the list Spain (and its former territories) in the table. If we count medals that way, the medal table would look like the folllowing:
| Rank | Country | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total | 1 | Roman Empire | 114 | 137 | 155 | 406 | 2 | Great(er) Britain | 111 | 120 | 128 | 359 | 3 | France | 105 | 102 | 113 | 320 | 4 | EU | 97 | 95 | 117 | 309 | 5 | Japan | 82 | 52 | 62 | 196 | 6 | Mongolia | 77 | 72 | 75 | 224 | 7 | Germany | 70 | 74 | 83 | 227 | 8 | China | 57 | 38 | 45 | 140 | 9 | Spain | 55 | 61 | 68 | 184 |
So the Romans (Italians) would come out on top in this competition, winning the most gold, silver and bronze medals (and over 100 medals ahead of Great(er) Britain). France apparently received the "host bounce" and switched places with Japan, which received the "host bounce" last time around. While most empires won fewer gold compared to Tokyo 2020, China received more medals than last time as South Korea more than doubled its gold medal haul (from 6 to 13) while North Korea and Vietnam won medals after being shut out the last time around. I guess I am surprised by Spain's low medal haul, since the total includes those won by the US (a large part of southwestern US was occupied by Mexico, which was Spanish territory before independence).
Base on results from the last two Olympics one may say that the Romans (Italians) remain the most powerful nation or that "the British are coming". To reiterate, if a country tries to artificially inflate its medal count, make sure this won't boost the medal count of other countries by a greater extent. (The zealots may comfort themselves by claiming that "our gold medal count was just more than 1/3 of the leaders'; now we have half their total. We will be on top soon.")