Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

U.S. Olympic team of 550-plus athletes most of any nation in Rio

2012 Olympic Games - Opening Ceremony

LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 27: Mariel Zagunis of the United States Olympic fencing team carries her country’s flag during the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on July 27, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

Getty Images

The U.S. will send the largest delegation of athletes of any nation to the Summer Olympics -- currently 555 qualified for Rio -- for the first time since the 2004 Athens Games.

The USOC is planning to officially announce the full team Saturday live on Periscope via @TeamUSA from Los Angeles at 3:45 p.m. ET.

Here’s the full list of U.S. Olympic team qualifiers.

Team USA has significantly more athletes than its biggest medal rival, China (416), and host nation Brazil (462).

In 2012, host Great Britain had 541 athletes in London, while the U.S. sent 530. In 2008, host China had 639 athletes in Beijing, while the U.S. sent 596.

The 2016 U.S. Olympic team will include its most female athletes of all time and more women (292) than men (263) for the second time.

It includes at least 191 returning Olympians, with seven going to their fifth Games and three going to their sixth Games -- shooters Emil Milev and Kim Rhode and equestrian Phillip Dutton. Milev and Dutton previously competed for Bulgaria and Australia, respectively.

Rhode moves one shy of the U.S. record of seven Olympic appearances (John Michael Plumb, equestrian, 1960-1992) and will become the first American to compete in the Olympics on five different continents. She could join Italian luger Armin Zoeggeler as the only Olympians to earn medals at six straight Games.

Two 2016 U.S. Olympians competed in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics -- Milev and fellow shooter Enkelejda Shehaj, a former Albanian who is going 20 years between Olympic appearances. More on Shehaj’s story here.

The oldest athlete is Dutton, who is 52. The youngest is table tennis player Kanak Jha, who is 16. It’s the first time since 1948 that a U.S. Summer Olympic team has nobody younger than 16, according to sports-reference.com.

MORE: Rio Olympics schedule highlights, daily events to watch