Perhaps the most striking event of the outgoing year in the sports life of Uzbekistan was the triumphant performance of the nation’s Olympic and Paralympic teams in Rio de Janeiro. The country had never seen such an abundance of medals.
In Summer Olympics, Uzbekistan made its debut as an independent country in 1996 at the XXVI Games in Atlanta. In total, our athletes managed to win 31 medals, five of them gold, in the Olympics in Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London. At the last Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the Uzbek sportspeople broke all their records – the bank of our sports delegation was filled by 13 medals: four gold, two silver, and seven bronze. In the overall standings, Uzbekistan came 21st out of 207 countries.
That was the best result of the participation of our country’s athletes in six Olympic Games. The achievements surpassed those reached twelve years ago. Worth reminding that in Athens, Greece, our athletes were on the 34th position with five awards – two gold, a silver and two bronze medals.
Boxers, who returned with eight medals out of 11 members of the delegation, excelled this time in the national team. Also pleased with awards the representatives of Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestlers, judokas and weightlifters.
Quite brilliant was the performance of 32 our Paralympians who have returned home with 31 medals, with six world, seven Paralympics and 12 Asian records. Having won eight gold, six silver and 17 bronze medals, Uzbekistan’s Paralympians came 16th in the overall medal standings (by number of medals – 12th), took the 1st place among the countries of Central Asia, the 2nd in the CIS (after Ukraine, represented by 171 athletes) and 2nd in Asia (after the largest team – China, with 326 athletes).
