How many medals has France won at the Olympics?

We’re nearing the end of the Paris 2024 Olympics, and France is doing exceptionally well. The country is currently ranking fourth for gold medals, and third for overall medals, and if it finishes in this place, it will be France's best performance since the Winter Olympics in Grenoble in 1968.

France has won more than 900 medals at the Summer and Winter Olympics, meaning the country ranks 5th out of all the countries in the world for its overall Olympic medal count. And when only counting medals won at the Summer Olympics, it moves up to the number five spot, behind Great Britain, the Soviet Union/Russian Federation and the United States of America.

France also has the sixth-highest amount of Summer Olympic gold medals, boasting 223 gold medals won over the past 128 years, ever since the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

Perhaps one reason for this - alongside the country’s excellence in all sorts of sports - is that France is one of only four countries which has competed in all 30 Summer Olympic games, the other three being Great Britain, Switzerland, Australia and Greece. Indeed, only fourteen nations competed in the first modern Olympic Games in Athens.

As more countries have joined the Olympics, you might expect that France would fall down the rankings. But in fact France has actually tended to perform better as the years have gone on. In 1972, 1976 and 1980, for example, France placed 17th, 15th and 8 respectively, when it came to overall medal count. But in 2012, 2016 and 2020, France came 7th, 7th again and 8th respectively. Not bad for a country of 68 million, especially when the top spots are often taken by countries with much higher populations.

Historically, France has performed especially well at fencing and cycling. The country currently holds 137 medals for fencing, second only to Italy, while for track cycling France holds 70 medals overall, second only to Great Britain.

Another Olympic tradition that the country can be proud of is that of the Olympic mascot. After the popularity of Schuss, the unofficial mascot for the Grenoble Winter Games in 1968, other countries have started to introduce their own mascots when hosting the Games. This year the French mascots (that’s right, there are two of them) are the ‘Phryges’. Find out all about them here.