A country winning all 3 medals at a Summer Olympics event

Question

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.

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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.

Source