Most Golds By Any Country Since Soviet break-Up

So who has got China these 48 gold, 19 silver and 27 bronze medals? For starters, its women, much more than its men. A total of 27 gold and 53 medals have been won by the women.As for disciplines, contrary to the widely held view that China maximizes its hoard from a few sports, the host country has won at least one medal in 21 different disciplines. What's more, in seven of these disciplines - gymnastics, diving, shooting, weightlifting, badminton, table tennis and trampoline - it is the top medal winner, including a clean sweep of all seven diving gold decided so far.
This kind of dominance could not have been achieved without some athletes putting in stellar performances and China is no exception.It has 19 athletes who are multiple-medal winners at the Beijing Olympics. The bulk of them, not surprisingly are in the disciplines China dominated.But a couple of stars stand out from even this crowd of winners. One of them is the 20-year old rising star of gymnastics, Zou Kai. This athlete who is from Luzhou in then Sichuan province won three gold medals at these games - the men's team, individual floor exercises and the horizontal bars.
In the immediate aftermath of the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, Zou had lost contact with his family back home and was planning to break off from training to try and trace them.Fortunately for him and for China, his family was able to re-establish contact with him before he could leave for Luzhou, allowing him to continue his training uninterrupted.Another definite star is Guo Jingjing, the 27-year old female diver from Baoding in Hebei province. The eye-catchingly graceful Guo, who lists music as her hobby, had already announced her intention of retiring from the sport after the Beijing games. That perhaps added to her determination to retain the 3m springboard gold that she won in Athens and with Wu Minxia also make sure China kept the 3m synchronised diving title to itself.These two apart, there are badminton stars like men's singles winner Lin Dan and TT women's winner Zhang Yining - both also getting gold in the team events — who made sure there were no major upsets for the hosts.But, unlike in the Indian case, it is not the stars but the system that has really delivered and delivered big for China at these games. That alone can explain the breadth of its penetration across disciplines you wouldn't associate with that country - including sailing, rowing, fencing, beach volleyball and hockey.

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