Maize and Blue Goes for Gold: UMich at the Olympics

This year, 44 athletes with ties to the University of Michigan competed at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. Ranging from incoming freshmen to current students to alumni, these U-M athletes have worked for years to perform on the Olympic stage. In Ann Arbor, we know them as U-M athletes, but in Paris they represented 22 different countries and competed in 19 different sports.

But onto the big question: How many medals did the University win? The 2024 total stands at 10, with nine Olympic medals — one gold, three silver and five bronze — and one, silver, Paralympic medal. This is slightly lower than the last few years of the Games — the last time the University won ten medals was in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. In gold medals, the University saw a steeper drop from previous years, last seen at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

So which sports do these medals come from? The University has taken home more medals in swimming than in any other sport. The U-M men’s swimming and diving program, winner of 12 NCAA team championships, has a history of dominance in the pool that has carried forward into the Olympic pools. 

In recent years, more medals have come from other sports like gymnastics and soccer, especially after the 2016 retirement of former Michigan athlete Michael Phelps. With rowing and water polo holding strong alongside swimming, however, it seems that the University will stay particularly well-suited to the water.   

With an 11-year-old skateboarder and a 65-year-old equestrian competing at this year’s Olympics, age was a subject of conversation this year. U-M athletes range from 18 to 37, with the center of the distribution predictably being around college-aged students. The average age of a U-M Olympian this year as calculated by The Daily was 23.9. Among U-M athletes, age was not a good predictor of success in this year’s Olympics — they won medals across the majority of the range. 

U-M sent the fourth-most athletes to the Olympics this year of any university, behind only the University of Southern Carolina, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Stanford, sending the second most athletes, brought home the most medals. Although U-M sent more total athletes than the fifth-most University of Florida, they won one fewer medal. Among these top five schools, there was not a strong correlation between number of athletes sent and number of medals won.

With the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics having come to an end, Wolverines across the world can be proud of the efforts of this year’s athletes. Medals may be an easy metric of success, but across the board, Michigan Olympians poured countless hours of work into competing on this massive stage, setting records and honoring Michigan Athletics. A final note on the numbers: The University sent more athletes to the Olympics and Paralympics than The Ohio State University, 44 to 25, and won more medals, ten to six.

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