Beijing 2008

KEY FACTS

Opening Date:
2008-08-08

Closing Date:
2008-08-24

Country of the host city:

Official website:
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Election

Sports

The program for the Beijing Games was quite similar to that of the 2004 Summer Olympics held in Athens. There were 28 sports and 302 events at the 2008 Games. Nine new events were held, including two from the new cycling discipline of BMX. Women competed in the 3000 metre steeplechase for the first time. Open water swimming events for men and women, over the distance of 10 kilometres (6.2 miles), were added to the swimming discipline. Team events (men and women) in table tennis replaced the doubles events. In fencing, women's team foil and women's team sabre replaced men's team foil and women's team épée. Two sports were open only to men, baseball and boxing, while one sport and one discipline were open only to women, softball and synchronized swimming. Equestrian is the only sport in which men and women compete together in the same events.

In 2006, the Beijing Organizing Committee released pictograms of 35 Olympic disciplines (for some multi-discipline sports, such as cycling, a single pictogram was released). This set of sport icons is named the beauty of seal characters, due to each pictogram's likeness to Chinese seal script.

The following were the 28 sports to be contested at these Games. The number of events contested in each sport is indicated in parentheses (in sports with more than one discipline, as identified by the IOC, these are also specified).

In addition to the official Olympic sports, the Beijing Organising Committee was given special dispensation by the IOC to run a wushu competition in parallel to the Games. The Wushu Tournament Beijing 2008 saw 128 athletes from 43 countries participate, with medals awarded in 15 separate events; however, these were not to be added to the official medal tally since Wushu was not on the programme of the 2008 Olympic Games.

Medal table

Athletes from 86 countries won medals, 54 of which won gold medals, both setting new records for Olympic Games. 118 participating countries did not win a medal. Athletes from China won 51 gold medals, the most of any nation at these Olympics, becoming the first nation other than the United States and Russia to do so since Germany in 1936. Athletes from the United States won the most total medals, with 110. Afghanistan, Mauritius, Sudan, Tajikistan, and Togo won their first Olympic medals. Athletes from Mongolia (which previously held the record for most medals without a gold), and Panama won their nation's first gold medals. An athlete from Serbia won its first medal under that name, having previously won medals as part of Yugoslavia and Serbia and Montenegro.

The top ten ranked NOCs at these Games are listed below. The host nation, China, is highlighted.