The most successful Olympic Games for the USSR national team can be determined by the percentage of gold medals in the total number of sets played. This relative value more accurately reflects the successes of Soviet sports than the absolute value, since in different years the number of medals played has changed. The XXII Summer Olympic Games, which were held in Moscow in 1980, became a record for the Soviet team.
The informal championship at the Moscow Olympics revealed the winners: the USSR team won 80 gold, 69 silver and 46 bronze medals. The second was the GDR team with a score of 47-37-42, and the third was the Bulgarian team: 8-16-17. The success of the Olympians of the socialist countries was largely predetermined, since these games were boycotted by many countries protesting against the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. The number of boycotters included the United States, whose athletes traditionally competed with the students of Soviet sports schools. As a result of the boycott, Soviet athletes managed to win almost 49% of the gold medals of their total.
If you do not take into account the Moscow Olympics, then the Summer Olympics, held in Rome in 1960, can be attributed to the most successful games for the USSR. Soviet athletes took part in it only for the third time during the revival of the Olympic movement.
At this sports forum, 134 sets of medals were raffled off. In the unofficial championship, the representatives of the USSR defeated even the recognized favorites - the US team. Soviet athletes managed to win 103 medals, of which 43 were gold, 29 were silver, 31 were bronze. If we recalculate this indicator as a percentage, then this is 32% of the total number of medals. Soviet athletes performed in all types of programs, except for field hockey and football.
The next victorious Olympics for Soviet athletes were the Summer Games held in 1972 in Munich. The first line of the unofficial team championship was again taken by the USSR. The Soviet team won 50 gold, 27 silver and 22 bronze medals out of 193 sets of Olympic medals. Success is estimated at 26%. These were games that brought together a record number of participants - 121 countries sent their representatives to Munich. Each of the 29 disciplines of the game program updated previous records, many of which became not only Olympic, but also world ones.
