Team USA Passes China on Final Day for Most Gold Medals at Tokyo Olympics
In a final-day sprint to the finish, Team USA overtook China to finish with the most gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics with 39.
The United States had to wait until its penultimate gold-medal match to surpass China, but after a win in the women's volleyball final, Team USA clinched the gold-medal count for the third-straight Summer Olympics.
Team USA's 39 gold medals doesn't quite match its last two Olympic performances where it won 46 gold medals in Rio de Janeiro and London, respectively. But it was enough to finish just one ahead of China's 38 in Tokyo.
The last time that Team USA didn't win the gold-medal count was at the 2008 Games in Beijing. China won 48 gold medals although the U.S. won the overall count with 112 total medals.
The U.S. also clinched the overall count in Tokyo with 113 medals, its second-biggest haul dating back to the 1988 Games after winning 121 in Rio. Team USA has not lost the overall medal count since the 1992 Games in Barcelona, where the Unified Team consisting of former Soviet republics won 112 medals.
In Tokyo, China finished second in the overall count with 88 medals while Japan came in third with 58, including 27 gold medals. The United States closed out the 2020 Olympics with 41 silver and 33 bronze medals.
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