How Has Canada Done At Past Summer Games?
Posted August 6, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Canada has both an illustrious history and an ignoble one at the Summer Olympic Games. We’ve been attending them in one form or another since 1900, to varying results.
Our all-time best showing came in L.A. in 1984, but it has an asterisk attached. That was the year Soviet bloc countries retaliated for many western nations boycotting the Moscow games four years earlier, leaving a very different competitive field.
Canada won 44 medals that year, including 12 gold and 18 silver.
Our worst year was in 1960, when our team in Rome didn’t do as the Romans did, winning just a single silver for our rowing team.
That performance was even worse than in 1900, the second modern Olympics, when Canada didn’t actually have a team.
That year we sent just two reps to the Games. One came back with a gold for the steeplechase. The other managed a bronze in men’s hurdles.
And few can forget 1988, when sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal in a doping scandal that in typical Canadian fashion, sparked a public inquiry back home.
What will this year’s Games bring? It’s hard to say, but there’s no shortage of athletes looking to make a little history of their own.
Here are the all-time stats for Canada at the Summer Games.
2004: Athens
Gold: 3
Silver: 6
Bronze: 3
Total: 12
2000: Sydney
Gold: 3
Silver: 3
Bronze: 8
Total: 14
1996: Atlanta
Gold: 3
Silver: 11
Bronze: 8
Total: 22
1992: Barcelona
Gold: 7
Silver: 4
Bronze: 7
Total: 18
1988: Seoul
Gold: 3
Silver: 2
Bronze: 5
Total: 10
1984: Los Angeles
Gold: 12
Silver: 18
Bronze: 16
Total: 44
1980: Moscow
Boycotted by Canada to protest the war in Afghanistan.
1976: Montreal
Gold: 0
Silver: 5
Bronze: 6
Total: 11
1972: Munich
Gold: 0
Silver: 2
Bronze: 3
Total: 5
1968: Mexico City
Gold: 1
Silver: 3
Bronze: 1
Total: 5
1964: Tokyo
Gold: 1
Silver: 2
Bronze: 1
Total: 4
1960: Rome
Gold: 0
Silver: 1
Bronze: 0
Total: 1
1956: Melbourne, Australia
Gold: 2
Silver: 1
Bronze: 3
Total: 6
1952: Helsinki, Finland
Gold: 1
Silver: 2
Bronze: 0
Total: 3
1948: London, England
Gold: 0
Silver: 1
Bronze: 2
Total: 3
1936: Berlin
Gold: 1
Silver: 3
Bronze: 5
Total: 9
1932: Los Angeles
Gold: 2
Silver: 5
Bronze: 8
Total: 15
1928: Amsterdam
Gold: 4
Silver: 4
Bronze: 7
Total: 15
1924: Paris
Gold: 0
Silver: 3
Bronze: 1
Total: 4
1920: Antwerp
Gold: 3
Silver: 3
Bronze: 3
Total: 9
1912: Stockholm
Gold: 3
Silver: 2
Bronze: 3
Total: 8
1908: London, England
Gold: 3
Silver: 3
Bronze: 10
Total: 16
1904: St. Louis
Gold: 4
Silver: 1
Bronze: 1
Total: 6
1900: Paris
Gold: 1
Silver: 0
Bronze: 1
Total: 2
1896: Athens
Canada did not enter.
Source: Canadian Olympic Committee
