With the Olympics concluded, it is now safe to say that the Cardinal had quite a time at the Beijing Games, racking up medals left and right in an effort that left all previous Stanford Olympic contingents in the dust.

Athletes currently or formerly associated with Stanford brought home 25 medals total from the 2008 Olympics — eight gold, 13 silver and four bronze — breaking the school’s previous mark of 21 total medals, set at the 1924 Paris Games. Were Stanford’s athletes a country, the Cardinal would have finished in 11th place for total medals, tied with Japan and better than such other nations as Jamaica (11 total medals), Canada (18 total medals) and Spain (18 total medals).

Perhaps the highest profile Stanford athlete at the Olympics was beach volleyball star Kerri Walsh ‘00, who, along with teammate Misty May-Treanor, earned a gold medal for the U.S.

The Cardinal had 48 athletes make the trip to China to compete in the Games, the most since the 1996 Games in Atlanta; 24 of those athletes earned medals. Rising junior swimmer Julia Smit was the lone Cardinal to medal in multiple events, winning silver in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay and bronze in the 4x200 meter relay.