Similar to the results from the Tokyo Olympics, the women on Team USA accounted for more than half of the Olympic gold medals at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.
On Saturday, Aug. 10, the exhilarating U.S. soccer victory over Brazil added an exclamation point to what had already been a fabulous Olympic Games for the American women.
In an emotional postgame interview with NBC’s Mike Tirico, U.S. Coach Emma Hayes hailed her players’ fortitude. “We got more aggressive as the game went on. I was encouraging that,” she said. “The heart, the determination, the grit — everything about these players is so unbelievable. I’m so proud.”
For the fourth consecutive Summer Olympics, U.S. women will win more medals than U.S. men. As of early Saturday evening, American women had won 58 percent of the total U.S. medals. Even midway through the Paris Games, Christine Brennan of USA TODAY projected that U.S. female athletes were “on pace to win more medals than U.S. male athletes” for the fourth consecutive Summer Games.
Heading into the final competition of the Games, Team USA trailed China by one in the gold medal race.
China secured its 40th gold medal on Sunday in the women’s 81kg weightlifting class when Li Wenwen defended her Olympic title from Tokyo. This left the U.S. with 39 golds going into the final event—the women’s basketball gold medal game between Team USA and France.
Team USA won that game in dramatic fashion, leading to a tie in the gold medal standings.
“I saw the medal count beforehand. I thought, ‘That’s what we need, more pressure,’” USA head coach Cheryl Reeve said after the game.
Of Team USA’s 40 gold medals, 26 were won by female athletes, meaning women were responsible for 65% of Team USA’s gold medal victories at the Paris Olympics.
This performance means that half of the U.S. team outperformed the full teams of about 200 other nations, including 85 countries that have won at least one medal. The top gold medal holders were followed by Japan with 20, Australia with 18, and France with 16.
Compared to the last Games, of America’s 39 gold medals in Tokyo, women were responsible for 23.
At Tokyo 2020, women’s participation reached 47.8%—the closest the Games had ever been to gender balance. However, the Paris Games marked the very first Olympic Games with full gender parity, as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) allocated 50 percent of the quota places to female athletes and 50 percent to male athletes.