2016 Summer Olympics participant South Sudan at the 2016 Summer Olympics
The 2016 Summer Olympics (Portuguese: Jogos Olímpicos de Verão de 2016), officially the Games of the XXXI Olympiad (Portuguese: Jogos da XXXI Olimpíada) and also known as Rio 2016, was an international multi-sport event held from 5 to 21 August 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with preliminary events in some sports beginning on 3 August. Rio de Janeiro was announced as the host city at the 121st IOC Session in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 2 October 2009.
11,238 athletes from 207 nations took part in the 2016 Games, including first-time entrants Kosovo, South Sudan, and the Refugee Olympic Team. With 306 sets of medals, the Games featured 28 Olympic sports, including rugby sevens and golf, which were added to the Olympic program in 2009. These sporting events took place at 33 venues in the host city and at five separate venues in the Brazilian cities of São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Brasília, and Manaus.
These were the first Olympic Games to be held in South America, as well as the first to be held in a Portuguese-speaking country, the first summer edition to be held entirely in the host country's winter season, the first since 1968 to be held in Latin America (the second being 2018 Summer Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, Argentina), and the first since 2000 to be held in the Southern Hemisphere. These were also the first Summer Olympics to take place under the International Olympic Committee (IOC) presidency of Thomas Bach.The lead-up to these Games was marked by controversies, including Brazil's political and economic crisis; the Zika virus epidemic and the significant pollution in the Guanabara Bay; and a doping scandal involving Russia, which affected the participation of its athletes in the Games.The United States topped the medal table, winning the most gold medals (46) and the highest number of medals overall (121); the US team also won its 1,000th Summer Olympic gold medal overall. Great Britain finished second and became the first country to increase its tally of medals in the Olympiad immediately after being host nation in 2012. China finished third in the medal table. Host nation Brazil won seven gold medals and 19 medals, its best result at any Olympics, finishing in thirteenth place. Bahrain, Fiji, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Kosovo, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Tajikistan, and Vietnam all won their first gold medals, as did the group of Independent Olympic Athletes (from Kuwait).