Illinois In Top 3 States For Bringing Home Olympic Gold Medals

As the 2026 Winter Games roll on in Milano-Cortina, Team USA is ticking up the medal count.

Whether it's the Summer Olympics or the Winter Olympics, at some point during the Games, all of us are parked in front of the TV watching something. We could be judging a gymnast or figure skater for not sticking a landing, while we're eating Cheetos on the couch.

Historically, there are certain states that lead the U.S. in the amount of gold medals that their native athletes bring home.

This ranking looked at the amount of individual event gold medals brought back to each state in every Olympics since 1924. Mind you, it only looks at gold, not all colors.

California came in 1st, with 133 individual gold medalists, New York came in 2nd with 63, and Illinois came in 3rd for the most individual Olympic gold medalists. Illinois has 40 so far from all the Games. Iowa, to this point, has 11 Olympic gold medals.

Meanwhile, how's it going in Milano-Cortina so far?

For these Games, Illinois isn't on the list of states with medalists so far. California and Colorado are tied with 4 medalists each (2 gold, 2 silver for California and 3 gold, 1 silver for Colorado). For Midwestern states, Michigan and Wisconsin are both on the list with 3 medalists each.

There's still about a week left in the Milano-Cortina Games so there's plenty of time to get more medals on the board. They will end on February 22nd. The next Olympics will be the Summer Games, which will be hosted in Los Angeles in 2028.