A Tie in the Olympics?

On August 1st, Gianmarco Tamberi of Italy, and Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar, tied for the gold medal in the men’s high jump. While at first that may seem odd to see a tie in the Olympics, they are quite common.

Between the summer and winter games, there have been 39 ties for a first-place alone. More common in the summer games, the tie from this year’s high jump makes it the 30th tie in the history of the summer games.

The Olympics with the most first-place ties would be the 1984 Los Angeles, USA, which saw five different ties. The event that sees the most ties is the men’s pommel horse with five ties. Two of those five were three-way ties for gold, and one of those was a three-way all Finnish gold.

Hearing about a tie in the Olympics would seem rare, but looking into it, it is not as rare as one might think. In all, there have been almost 150 ties in the history of the Olympics, and it seems to be something we are okay with.