Beijing 2008: And the winner is...

...the EU! The sum of all medals won by European Union member states´athletes would be 87 gold, 101 silver, and 82 bronze (sources: http://www.medaltracker.eu, http://fcohen.fr/jo/). According to a press release, "A common EU medals table at the Olympic Games shall appeal to "the heart and gut feeling of the people” in Europe." An interesting mind game in terms of European identity/ identity making.

See http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/medalcount.html for a similar count for the Athens 2004 games. The EU medal count seems to go back to the Olympic games in Atlanta 1996: "In 1996 after the Atlanta Games, Eurostat announced that the European Union had “won” the Olympic Games since the 15 member countries had both more medals and more medals per capita than the United States (08/15/1996 USA Today)." (source: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/meghan/Papers/whowinsv30.pdf).