The more than 1,000 former and current NCAA student-athletes who competed in the recently completed Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo combined to take home 282 medals.
To put that number in perspective, Team USA earned the most medals of any country, with 113, followed by China and Japan, with 88 and 58, respectively.
For Olympic purposes, a country's medal count includes team sport medals counted as one earned for a nation. For example, the gold medals won by the U.S. men's basketball, women's basketball and women's volleyball teams count only as three medals won. But for this purpose, all 36 individuals who represented the U.S. in these sports were former NCAA student-athletes and were presented gold medals after the competition.
The former and current NCAA student-athlete total medal haul included 114 gold, 84 silver and 84 bronze. Medalists included former Florida swimmer Caeleb Dressel, winner of five gold medals at the Tokyo Games; former Southern California indoor volleyball player April Ross, who won beach volleyball gold in Tokyo after winning silver in 2012 and bronze in 2016; and former UConn women's basketball players Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, who each won their fifth Olympic gold medals in the sport.
Former and current NCAA student-athletes earned 71 medals in Tokyo representing nations other than the U.S.
The other countries represented:
- Australia.
- Bahamas.
- Canada.
- Chinese Taipei.
- France.
- Granada.
- Great Britain.Â
- Greece.
- Hong Kong.
- Ireland.
- Jamaica.
- Kenya.
- New Zealand.
- Puerto Rico (The U.S. territory competes separately in the Olympics).
- San Marino.
- Serbia.
- Slovakia.
- Spain.
- Sweden.
- Switzerland.
- Uzbekistan.
Julia Grosso (bottom right), who will be a junior at Texas, scored the winning penalty-kick shootout goal for Canada in the gold-medal match against Sweden. (Photo by Atsushi Tomura / Getty Images)Â
Some of the notable former and current NCAA student-athletes were 15 members of the gold-medal winning Canadian women's soccer team, including Julia Grosso, who will be a junior at Texas and scored the winning penalty-kick shootout goal in the gold-medal match against Sweden. The bronze-medal winning Canadian softball team also had 15 members who competed at the NCAA level. And C.T. Pan, who placed second at the Division I Men's Golf Championships in 2015, survived a seven-man playoff in Tokyo to win bronze for Chinese Taipei.
Former and current student-athletes will once again play a prominent part of the Olympics when the 2022 Winter Games begin in Beijing on Feb. 4, 2022.
Team USA's April Ross and Alix Klineman, both former college volleyball players, pose with their beach volleyball gold medals. (Photo by Elsa / Getty Images)
