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 will change fast in the days ahead, but a couple of big trends have emerged that are fun to examine.

 (at the moment) in both Olympic gold medals and total medals. American athletes, often cheered on by family who've made the trip to Paris, have mostly hit their marks and often 

Behind that basic stat, things get more complicated and in some ways more interesting.  

Let's start with China. The medal count this year shows 

 itself as the big Olympic rival of the U.S., especially when it comes to gold medals.  

Anchored by three sports, diving, shooting and table tennis, Chinese athletes have kept the gold medal race close. The U.S. has a lock on the total medal count, but it'll go down to the wire whether the U.S. or China comes away from Paris with the most gold.  

If China wins the gold medal race, it'll be a first time it accomplishes that feat since the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

The next notable medal performance - in some ways the most remarkable - is Australia.  The country has a relatively tiny population - about the same as Texas.  

 (and a strong group of canoe racers) Australian athletes have racked up a crazy number of total medals (43 currently), including 18 gold.  It's Australia's 

That represents an unbelievable per capita medal score. Consider this: The U.S. is winning roughly one Olympic medal for every 3,500,000 million citizens. Australia is winning one medal for every 570,000 citizens. 

The Old World is still really good at this Game

Turning to Europe, it can be easy to think of Old World countries like France, Germany, and Italy as stodgy relics of the 

 era of the Olympics. But taken as a whole, Europe still dominates the Summer Games that Greece invented.

The European Union (not including Britain, 

) has won more than 160 total medals in Paris. That's more than China and the U.S. combined. Host country France has done especially well, racking up more than 50 medals.

 of Russia's involvement in these Summer Games. Russia has typically finished in the top-5 among nations in overall medal count.  

But this year, plagued by doping scandals and treated by the International Olympic Committee as a pariah following the 

, Moscow sent only a handful of athletes.   

So far, those Russians have failed to win a single Olympic medal at these Games, while Ukraine has 

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Brian Mann

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The U.S. now has more than 100 Olympic medals, the most of any nation. But there's a bigger story behind the medal count in Paris.

U.S. leads Olympic medal count in Paris but there's more to the story

Go Deeper.

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