Olympic Table Tennis Medals by Country and Event, 1988–2024

China's Gold Share Rose From 80.0% in the Doubles Era to 95.5% in the Team Era

The Olympic programme awarded four table tennis golds per Games from 1988 to 2004 (singles and doubles for men and women), replaced doubles with team events in 2008, and added mixed doubles in 2020. Across the 5 doubles-era Games, China won 16 of 20 golds, 80.0%; the rest went to South Korea (3) and Sweden (1). Across the 5 team-era Games it won 21 of 22, 95.5%, with the only other gold going to Japan (1).

Counting all medals, China's total is the same in both eras, 33 of 64 and then 33 of 66, and 10 NOCs reached the podium in the first era against 10 in the second. What changed is who else was there: South Korea fell from 15 medals to 5, the largest drop, while Japan rose from 0 to 10, the largest gain.

China won every gold at 6 of the 10 Games (1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2024). Over the whole period it holds 66 of 130 medals, 50.8%.

Medals by NOC, 1988–2004 vs 2008–2024

One row per National Olympic Committee, sorted by total medals; the left dot is the doubles era, the right dot the team era. Hover a dot for the count.

Every Olympic Table Tennis Medal, 1988–2024

Doubles rows carry Olympedia's team label (for example "People's Republic of China 1") rather than the pair's names. The 2 rows with two NOC codes are 1992 doubles bronzes shared by two teams.

Download the full table (CSV) · 128 rows

How the Numbers Were Made

Source and counting. Each Games' results table for table tennis on Olympedia was parsed, one page per edition, retrieved 2026-09-13: 128 rows over 10 Games. A row is one medal result; the two 1992 doubles bronze rows list two sharing teams in one cell, so tallies count each NOC code in the field once and the medal total is 130. The Tokyo Games held in 2021 are labelled 2020, following the IOC.

Events. Men's and women's singles run from 1988 to 2024; men's and women's doubles from 1988 to 2004; men's and women's team from 2008 to 2024; mixed doubles from 2020. The era split at 2008 follows the doubles-to-team change and gives five Games on each side.

The finding. China's gold share in each era is its gold rows divided by all gold rows in that era. Medal totals per NOC in the chart count gold, silver and bronze alike. The biggest riser and faller are the largest positive and negative differences in medal count between the two eras.

Doubles rosters. Olympedia's compact per-edition table names the team, not the two players, for doubles events, so those rows carry a team label; singles rows carry the athlete's name. Individual doubles rosters would need each event page and were not fetched.

Licence and attribution. Olympedia is a free, editor-run reference for Olympic results, maintained by the OlyMADMen group. No machine-readable licence or usage-policy page was found at retrieval (its /help page returned 404), so the results are used here as a factual compilation with Olympedia credited as the source, following the site's own citation convention. Anyone redistributing the table at scale should check Olympedia's current terms first.

Sources

1. Olympedia: Table TennisprimaryOlympedia (OlyMADMen) · primary · retrieved 2026-09-13 · No licence stated; credit Olympedia — Sport index linking the per-edition results pages
2. Olympedia: Table Tennis at the 1988 Summer Olympics (one page per edition through 2024)primaryOlympedia (OlyMADMen) · primary · retrieved 2026-09-13 · No licence stated; credit Olympedia — Editions 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 53, 54, 59, 61 and 63 were parsed; China's totals reconcile with Olympedia's own NOC medal tables