Cal Athletes Second Nationally Behind Stanford in Most Olympic Medals

Bay Area rivals demonstrate the strength of their Olympic-sports programs in the 2024 Summer Games, but can they continue to support those sports?

Hunter Armstrong and Ryan Murphy won silver in the 4x100 freestyle relay / Grace Hollars-USA TODAY Sports

Cal and Stanford put a lot of time, effort and money into their Olympic-sports programs, and the results were seen in the 2024 Olympics, which were concluded on Sunday in Paris.

Current and former athletes affiliated with Stanford won by far the most medals and the most gold medals than athletes from any other American college.  The Cardinal racked up 39 medals, including 12 gold.  Cal was second in the medal count with 23.

Even if you count only the athletes who attended Cal and not the ones who were part of Cal’s swimming training group, Cal captured 20 medals, which would still rank second.  But since the non-Cal-alumni who participated in Cal’s swimming training group wore Cal caps (with the script Cal on them) during the Olympics, representing Cal, they were included in our count.

However, the question now is whether Cal can continue to support Olympic sports programs considering the financial crunch the university athletic department is facing.  Cal will get only a 30% media revenue share from the ACC for the next seven years, travel expenses will increase, and Cal will need to provide lucrative direct payments to athletes as soon as 2025 to keep up in football and basketball, assuming that rule passes.  Getting $10 million from UCLA for the next three years will help, but that won’t make up the difference in the increased expenses and lower ACC media revenue.

When the ACC deal was finalized, then-Cal chancellor Carol Christ said she would not cut any sports.  But she also knew she would resign in June 2024.  New Cal chancellor Rich Lyons has made no public statement about the state of Cal athletics and whether sports will need to be cut.

For now, Cal can luxuriate in its 2024 Olympic success.

Here is the unofficial count of colleges with the most medals won by athletes affiliated with their school.

Stanford – 39 (12 gold, 14 silver, 13 bronze)

Cal – 23 (5 gold, 10 silver, 8 bronze)

Texas -- 16 (6 gold, 7 silver, 3 bronze)

USC – 15 (7 gold, 2 silver, 6 bronze)

Washington -- 15 (2 gold, 3 silver, 10 bronze)

Virginia – 14 (7 gold, 5 silver, 2 bronze)

UCLA – 14 (5 gold, 3 silver, 6 bronze)

Harvard – 13 (8 gold, 1 silver, 4 bronze)

You will note that Cal is only sixth in gold medals won, with Harvard a surprising second behind Stanford in that category.

You may also note that the NCAA.org website has different numbers and a different ranking for college medals. It’s difficult to discern the methodology the NCAA used for arriving at those numbers, since they don’t seem to correspond to the facts.

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