The Flyctory.com-Style Medal Count of the 2026 Milan/Cortina Olympics

The Fourth Post of this kind – this is definitely a tradition. Nineteen days of the Winter Olympic Games 2026 are in the books. I did my alternative medal count for the 2018 Winter Games already. And, of course, I did them for the 2020/21 Summer Games in Tokyo and 2024 in Paris. Now Milan and Cortina have closed their gates, waiting for the Paralympic Games. Here is my different way of looking into the strength of national Olympic teams by diversity. I also added a new analysis at the bottom, which I feel being very interesting as well.

I did this kind of posting for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games as well as for the 2020/21 Tokyo Summer Games already. While the medal count is one of the key tables you look at the end of Olympic Games, I like to publish to separate my medal count, which is more focusing on the versatility of certain nations. One of my key motivations has been that the Netherlands, for example, are extremely strong in speed skating, but apart from that not too striking as a winter sports country. Thus, I repeat this kind of posting again and present you my Flyctory.com medal count.

The Flyctory.com-Style Medal Count – What I did

The idea for this posting came up at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. There were some countries ranked rather high in the final table, like the Netherlands or Germany, which have a strong concentration on certain sports / disciplines. The Netherlands dominated speed skating, Germany was extremely strong in luge, for example. But which country is finally the most versatile, the one which is best in a wide range of sports. Thus, I came up with the idea to solely count one medal (of each kind) per sports. If you win five golden medals in alpine skiing, I just count one of them. If you additionally have one silver medal and three bronze ones, it will add one each to my medal count. In that case, you reached the maximum you can gain my count for that sports, i.e. one golden, silver and bronze medal each. I call that situation a Full House and evaluate that separately (see below). For the split of sports, I use the official Olympic one.

According to the Milan / Cortina 2026 website, the list of sports is as follows:

Alpine Skiing
Biathlon
Bobsleigh
Cross-Country Skiing
Curling
Figure Skating
Freestyle Skiing
Ice Hockey
Luge
Nordic Combined
Short Track Speed Skating
Skeleton
Ski Jumping
Ski Mountaineering
Snowboard
Speed Skating

This leads to a total list of 16 different winter sports featured at the Milan/Cortina Games. This also means that the maximum medal count you can reach in my alternative medal table is 16 of each kind. It is a bit of “unfair” as some sports like the speed skating disciplines have way more chances to get these medals than for example ice hockey (where there are just two events, men and women ice hockey). But I still feel it tells you a lot about widespread talents. By the way, the 2018 count was the only one I did so far for Winter Games (I skipped the Beijing 2022 Games). The 2018 count was lead by Canada. In this post, I ignore the Individual Neutral Athletes.

The Flyctory.com-Style Medal Count – The Table

Here is my alternative medal count, determined as described above. I give the position of the official medal count (i.e. ranked by golden, then by silver, then by bronze medals) of that country in brackets. I included all countries which at least received golden medals in two different sports.

Rank	Country	G	S	B
1 (2)	United States	6	7	8
2 (4)	Italy	6	5	9
3 (1)	Norway	6	5	5
4 (11)	Canada	4	5	5
5 (5)	Germany	4	4	6
6 (8)	Switzerland	3	5	7
7 (9)	Austria	3	4	5
8 (6)	France	3	4	4
9 (7)	Sweden	3	3	4
10 (12)	China	3	2	3
11 (14)	Australia	3	2	1
12 (10)	Japan	2	4	5
13 (13)	South Korea	2	2	2
13 (3)	Netherlands	2	2	2
15 (16)	Czechia	2	2	1
16 (15)	Great Britain	2	1	1

Naturally, the alternative medal table is rather close. The biggest drop, compared to the official medal count, is – not too surprisingly – the Netherlands. They only won medals in two sports, Speed Skating and Short Track. My 2018 ranking was won by Canada. The Canadian team proofed to be very versatile in Italy as well. My medal count made them climb up incredible seven spots.

Another Ranking – At Least one Medal in a Sports

I feel it is also interesting to see a ranking by how many sports a country won medals in. In this ranking, it is irrelevant whether this medal is gold, a silver or a bronze one. Here is the Top 10 of my ranking, again comparing with the official ranking.

Rank	Country	Sports with Medal
1 (2)	United States	11
2 (4)	Italy	10
3 (5)	Germany	9
4 (8)	Switzerland	8
5 (11)	Canada	7
5 (6)	France	7
5 (1)	Norway	7
8 (9)	Austria	6
9 (10)	Japan	5
9 (7)	Sweden	5

In this ranking, by the way, the Netherlands have a massive drop of 13 spots and place 16th, together with Bulgaria, South Korea, Latvia, New Zealand and Poland. The top-ranked country in the official medal board, Norway, is also facing a significant drop. Again, Canada is a clear winner. Switzerland also climbs up by four spots.

Full House – All Medals in a Sports

I already explained the full house idea above. A Full House sports is one in which you won at least one medal of each kind. Here is my ranking, based on that. The list of countries is naturally rather short at Olympic Winter Games.

Rank	County	“Full House” Sports
1 (1)	Norway	4
2 (11)	Canada	3
2 (4)	Italy	3
2 (2)	United States	3

Norway is in the lead here. It seems like they are strong in selected sports. Precisely, they won all kinds of medals in biathlon, cross-country skiing, ski jumping, and speed skating. I will have a posting with general thoughts about Olympic Winter Games, where I will come back to it. Canada is again a “winner” of my ranking. There are eight countries with two “full house” medal counts.

The Milan-Cortina 2026 Medal Count – Analysis by Sports

One analysis I did 2026 for the first time is the medal density. It tells you about how many countries won Olympic medals in that sports/discipline, compared to the total medals given. I split that into gold medal density, i.e. an analysis solely by golden medals, and medal density, in which I include all medals (gold, silver, or bronze does not lead to a difference there). For example Ski Mountaineering had three golden medals, won by three different countries. In this case, I divide three countries by three events and reach a density of 100%, which is the ideal value, because there is a great diversity of golden medals between the countries.

However, if I do this analysis for all medals, the possible nine medals have been won by the same three countries plus an Individual Athlete (I need to include the group of individual athletes here to have a fair comparison). This means that the nine possible medals (three gold, silver, bronze each) have only been won by four different nations. Four divided by nine, i.e. 44.4%, is a pretty average distribution only.

Gold Medal Distribution

Here is my full ranking of the gold medal distribution for all sports. If the density is the same, I also rank by the higher number of events (as I expect smaller density there).

Rank	Sports	Gold Medals Given	Gold Medal Countries	Gold Medal Density (pct.)
1	Ski Mountaineering	3	3	100.00
2	Figure Skating	5	4	80.00
3	Ski Jumping	6	5	66.67
4	Curling	3	2	66.67
4	Skeleton	3	2	66.67
6	Snowboard	11	7	63.64
7	Freestyle Skiing	15	8	53.33
8	Speed Skating	14	7	50.00
9	Alpine Skiing	10	5	50.00
10	Bobsleigh	4	2	50.00
11	Ice Hockey	2	1	50.00
12	Short Track	9	4	44.44
13	Luge	5	2	40.00
14	Biathlon	11	4	36.36
15	Nordic Combined	3	1	33.33
16	Cross-Country Skiing	12	2	16.67

You do see a certain weakness in this metric. Ice hockey, in which all, i.e. two, golden medals have been won by the USA, should be ranked even lower. Norway dominated the Nordic Combined and won all golden medals there. The higher the value is, the more interesting a sports event is (because there are more candidate countries which can win medals. Cross-country skiing is last in that table. Out of twelve events, only two countries, Norway and Sweden, won golden medals there.

Medal Distribution

Here is my full ranking of the medal distribution for all sports. In contrast to the table above, it counts all medals. There is no weight for golden, silver and bronze medal, but solely a pure count.

Rank	Sports	Medals Given	Medal Countries	Medal Density (pct.)
1	Curling	9	6	66.67
2	Ice Hockey	6	4	66.67
3	Figure Skating	15	8	53.33
4	Ski Mountaineering	9	4	44.44
5	Snowboard	33	13	39.39
6	Ski Jumping	19	7	36.84
7	Freestyle Skiing	45	15	33.33
8	Luge	15	5	33.33
9	Nordic Combined	9	3	33.33
9	Skeleton	9	3	33.33
11	Alpine Skiing	30	9	30.00
12	Short Track	27	8	29.63
13	Bobsleigh	12	3	25.00
14	Biathlon	33	8	24.24
15	Speed Skating	42	10	23.81
16	Cross-Country Skiing	36	8	22.22

I felt that this ranking is rather shocking. Out of the last six spots, five are very traditional sports. Obviously, there is a massive concentration of medals on a few countries. In general, I would say that this makes a sport more unattractive (at least outside of these countries. In cross-country skiing, for example, only 9 out of 36 medals have not been won by Sweden or Norway. These medals include events like relays, in which you could only send one team per country to the competition, so that you naturally have one medal winner, which is not part of this Nordic duo. Similarly, in speed skating. Similarly, the Netherlands won 30.9% of all medals in speed skating.

Title picture: Olympic Rings at Rho Ice Hockey Arena at Milan Trade Fair.