Want to be an Olympian? Go West, young athlete.
An OlympStats.com study found that Stanford, UCLA, USC and the University of California were the top colleges or universities attended by the 9,000-plus Americans to compete in Olympic history.
Olympic historians Bill Mallon and Hilary Evans spent the summer compiling the statistics.
They found that Stanford had at least 289 Olympians, followed by UCLA with 277, USC with 251 and Cal with 212.
Stanford and UCLA tied for the most Summer Olympians with 280.
The most Winter Olympians? The University of Minnesota with 93, more than two-thirds being hockey players.
Ivy League schools Harvard and Yale dominated the early editions of the Summer and Winter Olympics.
But USC topped the list at every Summer Games from 1928 through 1964 (tied with Cal in 1948). UCLA’s run went from 1968 through 2004. Stanford had the most in 2008, 2012 and 2016.
In Winter Olympics, the University of Utah topped the 2002 and 2006 teams, followed by Utah’s Westminster College in 2010 and 2014. Many skiers and snowboarders who train in Park City take classes at those two schools.
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