New Delhi: It's safe to assume that we have seen a national team hitting the 1,000th gold medal mark in the Summer Olympics at Rio 2016.
Early Sunday morning, the US women’s swimming relay team of Lilly King, Simone Manuel, Dana Vollmer and Kathleen Baker won the 4×100-meter medley final.
And it's being counted as the greatest Olympic nation's 1,000th gold medal. Then, minutes later their male counterparts, which also had Michael Phelps, won the 4×100-meter medley final.
But there's still arguments going around on the actual count.
Bill Mallon, the venerable Olympic historian for the United States Olympic committee (USOC), had the count at 996 coming into Saturday. That leaves the great American count still at 998 even if both the relay gold medals are considered.
In contrast, Infostrada had it at 997. And thus the USOC had the official number at 977 before the 2016 Games began, and the US has won their 24th gold with the men's relay team today.
1,000th or not, it's still an epic feat from the American athletes. Nearest teams to the US are Soviet Union with 395 and Great Britain with 236.
