New Zealand (NZL)

New Zealand was first represented at the 1908 Olympic Games. In that year it formed a combined team with Australia as Australasia. One New Zealander competitor, Harry Kerr, a walker, won a bronze in the 3,500 metre walk. In 1912, three New Zealanders competed with Australasia, Malcolm Champion winning a swimming gold with the freestyle relay team.

Finally, at Antwerp 1920, New Zealand took part in the Olympic Games as a separate nation, and it has never missed an Olympic Games since. New Zealand has had great success in track & field (26 medals and 10 golds), with several of its middle-distance runners being Olympic champions. But its top sport is now rowing, with a total of 29 medals and 14 gold.

Its top Olympians are all canoeists: Lisa Carrington, with five gold and one bronze; Ian Ferguson, who won four gold medals and a silver; and Paul MacDonald, with three gold, one silver and one bronze. Apart from the canoeists, New Zealand’s total medal count is led by equestrian rider Mark Todd (six medals, two gold), and its gold medal count is led by runner Peter Snell and by rower Hamish Bond, each with three golds. In all (Summer and Winter), New Zealand has won 143 Olympic medals, 55 of them gold.

New Zealand competed at its first Olympic Winter Games in 1952, in Oslo. It missed the Winter Games of 1956 and 1964, but has competed at all other editions since 1952. In 1992, Annelise Coberger won New Zealand’s first Winter Olympic medal, a silver, also the first Winter medal for a Southern Hemisphere country. Since then, freestyle skier Nico Porteous has won bronze in 2018 and gold in 2022 (always in the halfpipe event), and female snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott won one medal of each color.

In 1950 the Olympic Committee of New Zealand was awarded with the Olympic Cup.