By the Numbers
When the Olympic flame was ignited for the XXIV Olympic Winter Games on February 4, 2022, Beijing became the first city ever to host both the Winter and Summer Games.
Fuel your Olympic knowledge with these other intriguing facts and figures.
6 | The number of athletes who have won medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics. |
Eddie Eagan (United States) was the first athlete to do so, winning gold in the men’s light-heavyweight boxing competition in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1920 and then taking gold in four-man bobsled at Lake Placid, New York, in 1932. Other members of this elite group are Jacob Tullin Thams (Norway), Christa Luding-Rothenburger (Germany), Clara Hughes (Canada), Lauryn Williams (United States), and Eddy Alvarez (United States).
Source: espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/31981184/us-baseball-player-eddy-alvarez-becomes-just-sixth-athlete-medal-summer-winter-olympics
172% | The average budget overrun of every Olympic Games since 1960. |
The price of hosting the Olympics is steep, and to make things even more difficult, organizing committees’ initial cost estimates have proven to be far from accurate. Because of this, the number of cities applying to be hosts has dropped dramatically in the last 20 years.
Source: globalsportmatters.com/business/2021/07/21/tokyo-olympics-breaking-budgets-skyrocketing-costs-controlled
368 | The highest total number of medals won by a single country at all the Winter Games combined. |
The coveted top spot is held by Norway, making it the most successful nation at the Winter Olympics since the Games began in 1924. Next up are the United States with 305 medals and Germany with 240.
Source: statista.com/statistics/266371/winter-olympic-games-medal-tally-of-the-most-successful-nations
85 | The age of the oldest person ever to be awarded an Olympic medal. |
Though US ski jumper Anders Haugen competed in 1924 when he was 35, he didn’t receive his medal until more than 50 years later, after a ski historian discovered a scoring error that had mistakenly put Haugen in fourth place instead of third. After the International Olympic Committee was notified, they awarded Haugen his bronze medal in a special ceremony in Oslo on September 12, 1974.
Source: olympics.com/en/athletes/anders-haugen
91 | The number of BYU students who have been Olympians. |
Of this number, 18 studied in BYU Marriott programs, including medalists Shauna Rohbock (silver in two-woman bobsled in 2006) and Hugh McCutcheon (gold in 2008 as the US men’s volleyball coach and silver in 2012 as the US women’s volleyball coach).
Source: byucougars.com/page/byu-and-olympic-games
$800 | The value of a gold medal when melted down. |
This figure is based on the current market value of the materials used in the medals for last year’s Summer Games in Tokyo. If the price seems low, it’s because gold medals are actually made of gold-plated pure silver.
Source: cnn.com/2021/07/31/sport/olympic-medals-value-explainer-scli-intl
