There were nearly 100 Stanford and Cal athletes competing in the Olympic Summer Games this summer and they brought home medals in record numbers.
In fact, each school had 16 medals in London for a total of 32 leading into the final day of competition.
Many alums will tell you that if the two were a country the duo would come in seventh overall behind Japan and ahead of Australia in the list of nations. (See chart below). We know that math doesn't actually work out here because sometimes there are two members on a team, but you get the idea.
The heavy Bay Area college presence was not lost on the Cal women's volleyball team as they practiced at the Haas Pavilion this weekend. Cal has 46 current or former student athletes who competed in London.
"We kind of knew, going in, we had some people who were poised to take medals. So you're really not all that surprised? Excited, but not so surprised, yeah," junior Noah Efron said.
Cal Athletic Director Sandy Barbour credits a longstanding Olympic tradition at the school for the numbers. He said it's a tradition rooted in the institution that is dedicated to excellence. "But that's the environment that's built on this campus that's part of this campus culture around everything that this campus does," Barbour added.
The same can be said across the bay at Stanford.
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"And that competition extends not only to "Big Game" and "Big Splash" and "Big Spike" but it extends to the Olympics," Barbour said.
Both Cal and Stanford had a chance to get one more medal on the final day of competition.
Stanford's Ryan Hall didn't finish the marathon, stopping at Mile 11 with a bad hamstring putting him out of race entirely.
Cal's Kari Karlsson was also running the marathon for his home country of Iceland. He came in 42 - no medal for him.
So it came down to Cal's Aleksa Saponjic, who was on the Serbian men's water polo team. His team won the bronze medal match against Montenegro.Score one bronze medal for Cal.
That put Cal up one medal on Stanford 17-16 in the unofficial medal match between two rivals.
Great showings anyway you look at it.
