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At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the Jamaican sprinters Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, and Shericka Jackson swept the 100 meters women's medals by winning gold, silver, and bronze respectively. Also earlier in the games, in women's cross-country cylcing, the Swiss athletes swept the medals.

However, in many competitions only 1 athlete per country is allowed per weight class, or no more than 2 in a discipline (swimming nowadays for example). So I'd think such a feat is uncommon.

How many times, all 3 medals of a single event was won by athletes of just one country in a summer Olympics event? Please limit your answer to 1948 games and forward as I suspect this feat was more common in the older days due to limited participations.

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  • 1
    Swimming used to have 3 per country, changing after the Montreal games where there were sweeps.
    – Jon Custer
    Jul 31, 2021 at 21:25
  • I had heard swimming had a higher limit, hence the "nowadays". Do you know if the sweeps in swimming were common or not?
    – alamoot
    Jul 31, 2021 at 21:39

2 Answers 2

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There are some lists on Wikipedia that show so called Medal Sweeps in athletics, speed and figure skating, snowboarding and cross-country skiing.

So from these lists alone you can see that this still seems to be quite common, especially as there are lots of different events not listed; for the athletics events alone this has happened 41 times since the 1948 games.

I have also found a dataset that includes all the medals awarded until the 2008 Olympic Summer Games in Peking. So I wrote a script that collected all the Medal Sweeps in Summer Games from 1948 until 2008 and got a total of 98 Medal Sweeps. When looking at another data source I could find another 7 results that happened after 2008, or have not been in the first dataset, bringing it to a total of 105 Medal Sweeps since the 1948 Summer Games.

Keep in mind that i did not fact check all of these, or the datasets in general, but from what I could see it seems to be mostly correct. Also there are results included where more than three medals have been awarded in total, with one NOC taking at least one gold, silver and bronze medal, as well as results where not all three different medals were awarded (for example because of a tie for second place where a second silver, but no bronze medal was given out) but a single NOC still took all three medals.

This is the full list of events and the corresponding NOC that achieved this:

Year Discipline Event Gender NOC
1948 Artistic Gymnastics pommel horse M FIN
1948 Diving 3m springboard M USA
1948 Diving 3m springboard W USA
1948 Swimming 200m breaststroke M USA
1948 Athletics 110m hurdles M USA
1948 Athletics 3000m steeplechase M SWE
1948 Athletics shot put M USA
1952 Diving 10m platform W USA
1952 Diving 3m springboard M USA
1952 Athletics 110m hurdles M USA
1952 Athletics 200m M USA
1952 Athletics decathlon M USA
1952 Athletics discus throw W URS
1952 Athletics shot put M USA
1952 Fencing sabre individual M HUN
1952 Artistic Gymnastics rings M URS
1952 Artistic Gymnastics vault W URS
1956 Diving 10m platform W USA
1956 Swimming 100m butterfly W USA
1956 Swimming 100m freestyle M AUS
1956 Swimming 100m freestyle W AUS
1956 Athletics 110m hurdles M USA
1956 Athletics 200m M USA
1956 Athletics 20km walk M URS
1956 Athletics 400m hurdles M USA
1956 Athletics discus throw M USA
1956 Fencing épée individual M ITA
1960 Athletics 110m hurdles M USA
1960 Athletics 400m hurdles M USA
1960 Athletics discus throw M USA
1960 Athletics shot put M USA
1960 Artistic Gymnastics floor exercises W URS
1960 Artistic Gymnastics individual all-round W URS
1960 Artistic Gymnastics uneven bars W URS
1960 Artistic Gymnastics vault W URS
1964 Diving 3m springboard M USA
1964 Swimming 200m backstroke M USA
1964 Swimming 400m freestyle W USA
1964 Swimming 400m individual medley W USA
1968 Swimming 100m butterfly M USA
1968 Swimming 100m freestyle W USA
1968 Swimming 200m freestyle W USA
1968 Swimming 200m individual medley M USA
1968 Swimming 200m individual medley W USA
1968 Athletics 400m M USA
1968 Artistic Gymnastics floor exercises M JPN
1972 Swimming 200m butterfly M USA
1972 Swimming 200m butterfly W USA
1972 Artistic Gymnastics floor exercises W URS
1972 Artistic Gymnastics horizontal bar M JPN
1972 Artistic Gymnastics individual all-round M JPN
1972 Artistic Gymnastics parallel bars M JPN
1976 Swimming 100m butterfly M USA
1976 Swimming 200m backstroke M USA
1976 Swimming 200m breaststroke W URS
1976 Swimming 200m butterfly M USA
1976 Swimming 200m butterfly W GDR
1976 Swimming 200m freestyle M USA
1976 Athletics hammer throw M URS
1976 Athletics pentathlon W GDR
1976 Fencing sabre individual M URS
1980 Swimming 100m backstroke W GDR
1980 Swimming 100m butterfly W GDR
1980 Swimming 100m freestyle W GDR
1980 Swimming 200m backstroke W GDR
1980 Swimming 200m breaststroke W URS
1980 Swimming 200m freestyle W GDR
1980 Swimming 400m freestyle M URS
1980 Swimming 400m freestyle W GDR
1980 Athletics 800m W URS
1980 Athletics hammer throw M URS
1980 Athletics pentathlon W URS
1984 Athletics 200m M USA
1988 Archery individual FITA round W KOR
1988 Athletics 400m M USA
1988 Athletics hammer throw M URS
1988 Athletics long jump M USA
1988 Athletics pole vault M URS
1988 Fencing foil individual W FRG
1988 Artistic Gymnastics individual all-round M URS
1988 Table Tennis singles W CHN
1992 Athletics 3000m steeplechase M KEN
1992 Athletics hammer throw M EUN
1992 Athletics long jump M USA
1992 Badminton singles M INA
1992 Equestrian Dressage individual X GER
1992 Artistic Gymnastics individual all-round M EUN
2000 Archery individual W KOR
2000 Badminton doubles W CHN
2004 Athletics 200m M USA
2004 Athletics 3000m steeplechase M KEN
2004 Athletics 400m M USA
2004 Athletics long jump W RUS
2008 Athletics 100m W JAM
2008 Athletics 400m M USA
2008 Athletics 400m hurdles M USA
2008 Fencing sabre individual W USA
2008 Table Tennis singles M CHN
2008 Table Tennis singles W CHN
2008 Tennis singles W RUS
2012 Athletics 200m M JAM
2012 Fencing foil individual W ITA
2016 Athletics 100m hurdles W USA
2020 Athletics 100m W JAM
2020 Cycling cross-country M SUI
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  • Nice work digging that up!
    – pjmorse
    Aug 2, 2021 at 17:00
  • 1
    I think this article may confuse the 3km steeplechase with the 5km.
    – Neil Meyer
    Oct 11, 2021 at 11:16
  • @NeilMeyer as far as i can see there was only the 3km steeplechase at the 2004 and 1992 Olympic Games, am i missing anything?
    – schliebe
    Nov 1, 2021 at 20:53
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To add to the already good answer Kenya had a clean sweep in the men's 5km steeplechase in 2004 and 1992. Finland had a clean sweep in the event in 1928 and Sweden had one in 1948.

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