2008 Summer Olympics medal table

The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, were a summer multi-sport event held in Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China, from 8 to 24 August 2008. Approximately 10,942 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) participated in 302 events in 28 sports across 41 disciplines. Cycling BMX racing and 10 km (6.2 mi) marathon swimming were included as official medal events for the first time in history. The Marshall Islands, Montenegro and Tuvalu made their Summer Olympic debuts in Beijing.
Overall, athletes from a record 87 countries won at least one medal, and 55 of them won at least one gold medal. Afghanistan, Mauritius, Sudan, Tajikistan and Togo won their first Olympic medals of any kind. Athletes from Mongolia (which previously held the record for most medals without a gold) and Panama won their first Olympic gold medals. Serbian swimmer Milorad Čavić won the first medal for the country as an independent state. Samoa won its first Olympic medal due to a reallocation of medals after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) retested doping samples in 2016.
Athletes from the host nation China won the most gold medals, with 48, while athletes from the United States won the most medals overall, with 112. Among individual participants, American swimmer Michael Phelps won the most gold medals and the most total medals with eight each, breaking Mark Spitz's 1972 record for the most gold medals won at an Olympic Games.
During and after the games, many athletes who were caught doping, or tested positive for banned substances, were disqualified from competition and had their medals revoked.
The medal table is based on information provided by the IOC and is consistent with IOC conventional sorting in its published medal tables. The table uses the Olympic medal table sorting method. By default, the table is ordered by the number of gold medals the athletes from a nation have won, where a nation is an entity represented by a NOC. The number of silver medals is taken into consideration next and then the number of bronze medals. If teams are still tied, equal ranking is given and they are listed alphabetically by their IOC country code.
Events in boxing result in a bronze medal being awarded to each of the two competitors who lose their semi-final matches, as opposed to fighting in a third place tie breaker. Other combat sports, which include judo, taekwondo, and wrestling, use a repechage system which also results in two bronze medals being awarded. In the women's 100 metres in athletics, there was a tie for second place which resulted in two silver medals and no bronze medal being awarded. Two bronze medals were awarded for third place ties in both the men's 100 metre backstroke and men's 100 metre freestyle swimming events.
‡ Changes in medal standings (see below)
* Host nation (China)
Belarusian athletes Vadim Devyatovskiy and Ivan Tsikhan, who won silver and bronze respectively in the men's hammer throw, both tested positive for abnormal levels of testosterone. After attending a disciplinary hearing in September 2008, they were stripped of their medals on 11 December 2008. Krisztián Pars of Hungary was awarded the silver medal, and Koji Murofushi of Japan was awarded the bronze. However, both of the Belarusian athletes subsequently had their medals reinstated because the doping tests were not handled correctly.