Greece (GRE)

Greece is the home of the Olympics, with the Ancient Olympic Games having been held there from at least 776 BCE through 393 CE. The Modern Olympic Games were revived and first held in Athina in 1896. Prior to 1896, several attempts at the revival of the Olympics were contested in Greece, notably the Zappas Olympics of 1859, 1870, 1875, and 1889.

Since 1896, Greek participation has been continuous at all Games of the Olympiad. In honor of being the ancestral home of the Olympics, at the Opening Ceremony, the Greek athletes always march first into the stadium.

Greece hosted the Games of the Ist Olympiad in Athens in 1896, the Intercalated Olympic Games of 1906, and the Games of the XXVIIIth Olympiad in 2004. Through 2022, Greek athletes have won 121 medals in the Olympics (35 gold), with many of those occurring in 1896 (and 1906, not included in that total). Of these, 16 medals and six golds were won in 2004, on home soil.

Pyrros Dimas leads the Greek medal list, with four medals and three golds in weightlifting. He is the only Greek to win three gold medals, although he is an ethnic Albanian, but Kostas Tsiklitiras and Nikolaos Georgantas both won four medals in the early years of the Modern Olympics. After Dimas, the gold medal count is topped by Georgian-born weightlifter Akakios Kakiasvili, who won gold in 1996 and 2000, after winning a previous gold representing the Unified Team.

Greece has also competed at the Olympic Winter Games, first appearing in 1936, and since missing only the 1960 Paradise Valley/Olympic Valley (then Squaw Valley) Olympic Winter Games. Greece has had Olympians competing in eight disciplines, as follows: Alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, luge, skeleton, ski jumping, and snowboarding. Their best finish at the Olympic Winter Games has been 13th, by Cindy Ninos in 2002 women’s skeleton.

In 1961 and again in 1971 the Olympic Committee of Greece was awarded with the Count Alberto Bonacossa Trophy. In 1978 the Olympic Committee was awarded with the Olympic Cup.